8:10 p.m. - 02/26/03
\"I would rather be locked to you. ::'::
I want to know how to start this, what to say, where to end, but I don't. It's just moving my fingers against keys and hoping what's formed are words. Words that form sentences that re-form thoughts. I want communication, but right now, I might need to settle for movement- fingers against keys, eyes blinking in skewed rhythms. I'm trying not to let my vision blur. It's hard; I don't realize even now how often I move my eyes so I can't see the world around me. Sometimes I move more than my eyes. I need to hang onto my senses, though. I need to hang onto myself.
I remembered something the doctor said sometime ago, today. That homebound is not simply school from a distance. That there's a reason the forms are approved again and again. I have an illness which keeps me homebound. And I need to just let this time be about that illness. I need to just let it go for a moment, to say that I need time to sort out what's going on enough in my own mind, to forget about physics and history and psych. I called her voice mail today and asked that we not meet before Monday. She's always kind so why do I expect her to feel upset for me? Why do I expect her to scream rather than care? I've been thinking about Neverland; I don't live there anymore. I don't live there, but I can't help feeling it needs to be burned to the ground and fenced off from the world.
I checked out Laura's website today and discovered my darling drama troup is in good hands (at the middle school level). I felt joy. There are very few good hands left in that building. I still don't want to go anywhere near the place, but I'm glad that what was good has stayed good.
Lately, all I want to do is sleep, and sleep I do. I'm sleeping as I write this entry. I'm not sure how to make it interest you. I need to be invested, somewhat, for it to move anything in a reader. I don't have enough movement in me to do that now.
The appointment today was at 2:30, which is not the normal time. I played "Burn to Shine" on the way there and debated with mom whether Ben Harper is God and when her silly delusions left us outside his building 1/2 hour early, I sat with her in the car and left the music on. I'd choose Dear Ben over muzak any day. My feet were cold in my Sketchers, but it had stopped snowing, and she let all but the last song play. We went out of the car and into the cold, into the office, dusted the snow onto a carpet positioned for such purposes. We waited and listened to music tuned to the consistency of honey, and the doctor appeared somewhat on time. He talked with the two of us for a moment in the waiting room, about where my dad was at (the hospital being checked by a cardiologist) and where he would be (in that same waiting room for the following appointment.) He told my mom to take me home when the first session finished, to parent me before my dad. In the reprieve of his office, brown leather and happy elephant sculptures, I thanked him for this.
He asked, first, if his decision had been the more helpful one, and I told him yes. He asked about the past few days, I told him I've been "not good" and managed to keep from crying simultaneously. He asked about life in terms of our last few appointments, in terms of the relationshit. I told him I've certainly been thinking about it, some, and that it's difficult. I told him more than anything I've been thinking about Rogers, and the one condition that invaded their unconditional support. The one thing that separated me from their understanding: my love for them. I told him that I didn't want to go into this other thing I wasn't sure they could accept when I was already too far away from them. I told him that I didn't want to go into anything when I couldn't tell it to them. When I can't even call because it means not being honest. If I were to be honest I would say, I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I miss you so much. Whenever I call I say things like school and plays and food, and my tone falls flat, so that afterward there doesn't even seem a point to tears. I don't want any more of that.
He said that it made sense to be especially missing them now, in the context of a (more than normally) tumultous homelife, not that he expected sense-making to quiet the pain. I told him I didn't know what to do, that I didn't know how to fix it, and I started bawling; he broke in- which he does so rarely- and said there was nothing for me to change. I told him about how horrible I feel for loving them (who I am not supposed to) in place of my family (who I should love that way.) He said he didn't know how I, or almost any person in my place, could feel differently. He doubted he'd believe me if I said I did. He told me that no matter how much one loves a family, they can't necessarily be what Rogers was. My family certainly couldn't. My family still isn't. And he said it's ok that I'm in love the way I am. He said it's ok, and I wanted to hug him, but as usual, I couldn't make myself ask.
I told him that it sucks, and it doesn't make sense, and I want the secret magic that will fix it all. I want to know what I'm supposed to do, how I make it happen. He asked if there was any way I could begin to broach the subject with them (and I wanted to breathe because he talked of them within a future tense)...and I told him I thought I had, with the letters. The letters that almost no one responded to. I love Stacy, and I'm so grateful for her, but it's more than her I need. It's not that she isn't enough; it's not that there's someone else...it's the lacking validation. I need to be told by them that this love is ok. I need to be told by them that they understand. I need to be told by them that I'm not a freak and even that they love me back if that is possible. I need to be told by them the opposite of all my head has to say.
I wanted to ask him to call Dave and make the man understand because Dave is the one I know will not be swayed by sentiment and silly Mary-ness. I wanted to make him go into the battle on my behalf and shake sense into them. I couldn't do that either.
In the letters, I said things like, "to be totally honest, I miss you" and "wanting you in my life" and "I'd love to hear from you." In the letter that Stacy replied to I told her that I knew it sounded crazy that Rogers was my home, it was my first experience of one. Dr. R said there's no way that someone who lived in my shoes up until that point, and after it, and then came back into this life after Rogers, could keep from feeling what I feel. Could keep from understanding what was true. The truth didn't scare Stacy away from me. It didn't beckon validation, though. It didn't bring a representative to say, "You, yes, we remember *you.* We understand, and Mary, it's OK."
Just let it be ok. Just stop this constant bashing in my head that doesn't allow me to say what's real. I told him, choking on the words, "What I really want is to go back, and not only can I not do that, I can't even say so." I can tell him. I can't tell Rogers. I can't tell my parents. I can't tell anyone outside his office. Here I am, three feet tall, alone in a supermarket. Screaming for help and reciting my address over and over again. 53066. 53066. 53066. I won't forget, I won't forever, I won't forget.
He says it will bring me a lot of pain, this gift I have. He calls my attachment a gift, which is what the writing (the fucking writing) was always called, and I want to throw my arms around his neck because the whole time I kept asking my friends, "But do you *really think* I should be a writer?" what I wanted them to say was, "No, not totally. Because you're so much more than your words, Mary. I mean, the writer part of you's great, but the part I really like is the one who sits with me, and talks, and listens, and is silly, and holds me when I cry. That's your best gift." He calls it a gift, and says that there are few people in the world who will understand it, or be able to connect as deeply as I do. He says to those people, my sort of connection will be a gift, while it will be painful for me. And I want to say, "Then take it away! Then numb me out; make me the same as them" but I know that even if I could take away the craving, the desperation, the necessity- if I could make myself wooden like I dream when the pain is raging inside of me- I wouldn't be happy. I tasted it. And it's all I want not. It isn't enough to stop wanting it. I need the need fulfilled.
You can only send so many unanswered letters before you start constructing the responses. You can only love so many times before the heartbreak shatters you. It's heartbreaking, he said, and that's what it is. Now, I know I have a heart because it's breaking. Now I know I'm real because I love you so deeply the feelings shake my core.
Beth Ann left a lovely note for me about whether or not I'm too good to be real, and it made me think about all the times people have told me I'm not really who they thought I was (or who I pretend to be) and all the times I've wanted things to be or not be real. Then I remembered the rocking horse from the Velveteen Rabbit who says that no matter what, if you are loved once, you are real for always. Rogers was my once. I'm real now, and nothing can take that away...Even when I want it to.
I didn't even have to ask for the second appointment this time. He offered it, and I grabbed on. I've been hanging onto Sunday since his first mention of it. I swing from appointment to appointment like a trapeze artist in suspended motion. I want to rewind.
chord
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