4:55 p.m. - 02/18/03
:*a hell of a lot)-(of clean cold snow::
I just feel lower than down right now. I don't know where it's coming from (or I don't want to know.) The morning went pretty well; I continued my productive streak, and felt excitement in that. I think I continued it too far, however, or maybe things just naturally coursed back into the dumps. Everything is so hard lately. Even the fucking food. And that makes me so angry and scared. I'm sorry! I want to scream I'm sorry at the world. I want the fact that I know better than to struggle with food to somehow keep me from struggling. I want the fact that I've done better in the past to ease the doing better now. It doesn't seem to have any effect. I can push myself to maintain behavioral abstinence (though not to excell by any means), but I can't make the thoughts go away. The you-can't-eat-thats and are-you-serious-es? The feeling of extra weight in my body, the feeling of shame and numbness and fear. The memories of yesterday's meals that interfere with today's. I want it to not matter again. I want it to not be a problem. I feel awful for having brought it up, as now of course, I'm simply illustrating everything I talked to the doc about. I feel awful for acting sick just after I brought it up because obviously that means it was pre-planned, engineered. Obviously, it could never mean that I saw hard times coming and called for help. Preparation to ease the coursing of the storm. I feel like I was meant to redirect it completely.
I'm sorry. I want to be good at this, at everything, but I just don't know how to. EDAW is the same week as my birthday (every year), and I've spent the past three wishing that I had the guts or the energy to do something and unable to achieve either. Now I'm facing another, and I want desperately to find some purposeful way of expressing my own pain, my own recovery, my own struggle, my own grief, some way of helping out with this, and I just can't. There isn't an event in the local area. (As if there's a local area to begin with.) And I don't have the time or the stamina to organize one. Are you listening to me? I have a fucking retreat center at my beck and call, and I'm refusing to help. And I'm so sorry. Once again it's fallen to, "I so want to save the world, but I think right now I just need to crochet." And I can't handle that anymore. I can't handle the fact that Tracy died and my friends are struggling and I'm struggling and it's still not enough to cause some vast change in the world. It's still not enough to get me off my ass and out into the world. The havoc wreaked by illness isn't enough to cure it. And I hate that.
I love them so much. My friends. I love them so much and no one is immune. No one knows they're beautiful. No one feels safe. No one is getting what they deserve. I don't know what to do about any of it, and to quit being codependent for half-a-second- I don't know what to do in my life. I don't know. I don't know how to make the pain stop or determine what the hell is going on now. I don't know how to fix my fucking meals or stop feeling like a brat for struggling. I don't know. And I'm sorry; my God I'm sorry. I've taken on all these stories; I hold other people's pain in my skin and my veins, and then I do so little with it. I just get sicker, less capable of compelling progress. A pro-recovery diarying? That's all I can do? A fucking ribbon pinned to my chest for a week? My roommate died. My friends struggle every day to eat. People who will never have eds feel like shit about their skin, their teeth, their shape, their weight. And I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of my own weakness, and the gap it places between me and my standards. Here I stand, incapable of talking, eating, going outside the way that others can. Here are my standards: I must save the world. And I hate it. I hate that fucking gap, which keeps me down, keeps me lost, keeps me shamed. I don't know what's wrong so I can't deal with it. I wish I could just say it. I wish I could just know. I wish I could just say, "This is real" and not worry that I'm making it up to have a reality. I want to be able to say, "This is what I've been struggling with" but I don't trust my own words to keep from being lies. I don't trust my own words.
God, the grief I have for myself. The grief I have for myself. The grief I have for *my self.* I am so desperately frightened for you, girl. I am so desperately in love with you. I am so impatient to know you, so hysterical over the possibility of either losing or attaining you. I am so irrationally pushing, so intensely passionate for you. I want you to be. I want you to be now. I want you to be all of you right this moment- now.
I can't wait any longer. Not in the wake of where I've been. Not when I've seen what I've seen. It should speed up the process; it should make me stronger: all that I've borne witness to. I know enough to take this illness and whop a hard blow against its jaw. Why isn't that enough? What the hell is time? What the hell is patience? What the hell is trust? I already lived seventeen years without myself. Now I want her, now I begin to know her, and I can't take waiting. I can't take waiting. Don't make me grieve another year. Another year lost, another EDAW passing by. Don't make me grieve all that there is to grive.
Don't make me feel the wrenching inside which screams and won't be silenced until all the tears are gone. I'm sorry for what I've been through, for the fact that I'm still going through it. I'm sorry for how much of my life I've lost. I'm sorry for how much I still haven't gained. I'm sorry for everything I'm missing, and everything I'm thinking that would be better never thought. I'm sorry that I've had to endure this, that so much of my life has been *endured*...I want you all the way. I want me all the way. I want to love and scream and eat and pay and cry and jump and bounce and fight and everything else with a ferocity, with an awareness of one who was deprived. I want it to start now- to be now. I want to start out at top speed; I don't want this slow acceleration I can barely recognize. I don't want yield and stop and one-way signs. I want me. Right now. Right now.
I believe in it, damnit. I believe in who I am; I believe in what I'll be, what I deserve, how I can love, how I can ameliorate the world. I believe in it, so give it to me now. Don't make me wait another eighteen years. Don't make feel all the backed-up pain in wondering whether or not my future is my past.
I say, I want it. I say, I deserve. I say, I'm doing everything I can. Why is the answer always silence? Why is the quiet so cold? Why can't there be someone here to take me in their arms and show me the secret to living my real life? I give in, I understand, I've worked like hell to get here. Let me in. Let me in. Don't make me waste away waiting. You know this is a virtue I don't have. I need it. I need home, I need me. I've done everything I can for now, and I don't know how to do nothing. I don't know how to do nothing; I won't do it. I won't wait and risk losing everything again, risk going back to who I was. I won't; I will rage against the dying of the light. You've got to entrust me with that flame, with my flame, so I may keep it safe and use its fuel. You've got to say it's time. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. It's got to be time. I can't wait any longer. I can't.
I want me. Now, before I succumb to the meantime. Now, before I realize how lost I've been.
Somebody bring me home. I need to come home. I need to stop this. I need to feel safe again. I need my own reality to fuel what I build. I need to not be disconnected from what's true. I need to know who I am before I have to face how much I kept quiet. I must know in order to face knowing. I can't take my own secrets anymore. Just fill in the blanks. Fill in the blanks and let me live my life from there. Don't make me pace around the spaces looking for memories of what's erased. I can't do this. I just want you. I just want you. I won't make it through this pain to the other side. I just want me, but I'm not strong enough without knowing to reach that.
Agggh...
May all that I will be keep me safe.
chord
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