3:35 p.m. - 01/10/02
my study habits are sub-par, but I really *am* a decent kid.
Waah. Some days 60 minutes of talking just is not enough, and I have a heightening suspicion that tomorrow is going to be one of those days. Mom is determined to have me talk with Harriet about my "plans for January" a phrase that has been burned into my brain so many times that I'd like to take a machete to the alphabet simply so no one can ever make those words in that order again. Or maybe I just want a tape of it that I can smash to pieces. I seem good at breaking things lately, so that might be a good outlet for my accident-prone energy.
Meanwhile, when we last left Harriet, she was sitting in her office, watching me begin to cry with a good 20 seconds left in the session, and suggesting we start the Friday meeting with whatever I felt I so needed to tell her - which I agreed to...and though I don't think it will take as long this time to be like, "Please don't hate me, I know this is awful and disgusting and you'll probably think I'm a freak who doesn't want to get better, but I'm cutting again, or at least I was, I think I stopped now" - at the very least I think it's important we go into what the hell happened that I was (am?) cutting, restricting, near purging, and (god forbid) actually eyeing the diet soda again. I think it's important that she know that Tracy is still gone, my parents are still finding new and improved ways to go off the deep end, my brother is depressed and following me around to discuss it - not to mention making these weird comments about who I am/ what I look like that *aren't* helpful, my sister doesn't sound good, I've been called "hellspawn" by voices *outside* my head, I've been told people were wrong to ever have loved me not to mention I'm sadistic, I have two Hogwarts application deadlines nearing that I've hardly begun to examine because I feel like I'm applying for something far greater than education (say: love) and I look at the criteria for the perfect enrollee, and I know I'm so far from it, they'll probably laugh in my face, if not pat my head, and as much as I want to see my friends, I never want to leave the house again, and even though I'd kind of like to go to my old school once for visiting, I can't handle everyone knowing what I've been through, which they do, so why should I bother trying to brave those halls when the entire world is going to know me in health-textbook terms and forget I used to be a girl with some personality?
Oh, and Tracy is still gone - she's wandering around a dark dimensional hole and I'm still trying to find her, even though I don't know how to get past the barriers of my own faith, which don't exactly go into st. peter's, golden gates, or feathered wings. (Well, wings *maybe* but in a sense some thousand times removed from most things Christian.) This is the first time in years that I've ever really wished I was traditionally religious because it'd just be so much easier to believe something along the lines of, she and god are chatting it up at some crazed afterlife dance party (so not *completely* traditional) then to think that people just *end.*
Do people just end?
I mean, as far as my beliefs go, souls do not end. Souls continue on, take new forms, take old forms, take simultaneous forms (because in the grand scheme of my beliefs time is not so much a straight line as a really confused ball of crochet yarn) and so the essence of Tracy, which was so fabulous, does still exist, has always existed, and will always exist...as far as I can see...but...what about the everydayness of Tracy? What about the girl who had the stuffed animal dog, and the love of pop music, and the heart so full of/ desperate for love...? What about *my* Tracy, my simple, human, non-pedestal-ized Tracy? Where is *she?*
This Hogwarts application has my head in knots. I'm remembering how crazy Jenna went when she finished up her college applications at RED. I kept asking her why she didn't just write about her illness/ recovery, as it seemed to encompass so many of the questions (essays, et cetera), but she was dead-set against that, and even though I semi-understood why, I didn't think I would ever join her in keeping this silent. Another girl, Rosie, planned to tell her school that the time she spent at RED was spent playing tennis in Europe (a believable fib, in her case)- and I remember saying to her that although I understood where she was coming from and would support whatever decision she made, I hated the stigma surrounding eating disorders so much that I felt responsible for helping heal it. I figured that the more I didn't talk, the more all the false, ignorant beliefs would be perpetuated, and I don't want that, but now, back out of RED, actually faced with the world I was so determined to change, I'm just a scared kid. Come on, now, I've found some friends among the ostracized, I've helped some people with "sick" friends understand the illnesses better, but who has come to me thinking that depression, anxiety, and eating disorders were all pathetic forms of weakness induced by an idiotic society, and gone away with a different mind? It doesn't happen. Sure, I would love to apply to this question - "Explore an issue of local, national, or personal concern and its importance and relevance to you" - with a rant on the internal and external pain of ED ... or use this prompt - "Describe a situation in which your values or beliefs were challenged. How did you react? Was the situation resolved?" as a soapbox for fear I have for college applications and the stupidity it stems from, *but* I'd also really like to get in, and though artists aren't supposed to take the safe route, girls with anxiety disorders tend to go down well-lit streets.
I think, though I'm not completely certain, that it will be different when I apply to college. I have a theory now that I'll apply to less prestigious schools- my first choice has begun to break away on several grounds...I think I'd enjoy myself much more at a smaller school with a personalized "concentration" program in place of a major. I'm sick of pretending that what I want to be has a label, and trying to pidgeonhole it into these little collegiate boxes academia is so fond of...I know people who love concentrations and people who hate them, and I seem to have much more in common with the people who love them. At the same time, I feel like whatever university/ college I go to will be the best that I could have gotten into, and so to say that I graduated from Nowhere Junior College will be yet another stigma keeping me back. I'd almost like to apply to Yale or Stanford or Harvard, get accepted, and then go to NJC. Just to say, "I wanted this. I wasn't *put here.*"
With Hogwarts, though, it's more difficult because unlike my post-high-school alternatives, I only seem to have this one option in terms of arts education, high school alternative, and get-me-the-fuck-out-of-the-house fulfillment. And even though I'd like to be of the "if they don't want me as who I really am, screw them" mindset, my people-pleaser isn't so confident.
The other argument would be that I'm more than an illness, more even than my recovery, and although I discovered, and continue to discover, quite a bit of myself through those roads, I have other facets. I'm not Ed personified. I'm me. And I might not like her too much, but at the very least I'm not just the sum of my symptoms. Maybe I'll just write like three essays for each prompt, have people read them and tell me which are best/ represent me most accurately, and, assuming I agree, submit those. After all, essays aren't supposed to be autobiographies. If I tried to squish my life into each of these journal entries, it would be even more incoherent than it currently is, and wouldn't *that* be scary. No, I think I'll just write some essays, compare them, and let this all go. It's not like they don't have my portfolio to say, "Hey, she seems to have some passion against mental illness and the surrounding social stigma. We like passion."
They like passion. ...Don't they?
nailbitingchord
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