3:28 a.m. - 05/29/03
this little piggy ... all the way home.
Don't make a big deal out of what's not a big deal. Right, ok, but everything is so inflated for the moment, I can't even see "it" clearly enough to decide whether it's a "big deal". What's going on with me? What's happening? I cry and don't feel better now. I barely managed dinner last night (but I did.) The things that are supposed to be solid and secure the axes* that my world, center and depend on, seem to have fallen away. I cry and don't feel better. I write private entries or not at all. And I'm not really hiding anything from anyone; I'm isolating but that doesn't seem the same. I'm up at three in the morning, but that makes sense considering, I forced myself to bed at nine for the second night in a row. I can't stand to be awake right now.
I told the doc last Thursday that my parents are crazy. He said there are crazy things going on and crazy decisions being made, which is true. My dad's been living with my grandmother for almost a month now. I don't care how much of a doting mother she is, dealing with the wreck of my parent's marriage has to be getting on her nerves. The woman has a more active social life than I do. I can't help but feel my father cramps her style. Not that I think this is a picnic for him either, or for my mom who basically insists that nothing unusual is going on. There's truth in that actually. What with all the different states they've lived in (separately) this isn't exactly unusual.
I'm not doing well. Let me just type that out loud. The depression has been intense for a few days, and the anxiety has been off the charts. (That could very likely be coincidence, but the fact that the Buspar - which I ran out of and therefore didn't take for several days - might not be a placebo upsets me.) I had what I guess I'll call an "ugly day" for the first time in months- yesterday. We left the house so potential buyers could trek through (and of course, they didn't; they'll come tonight instead) and I realized that I wanted to run back inside, into the dark, and pull a blanket over my head. I did not, under any circumstances, want to be seen. And that's how dinner got hard, or at least there was some correlary. I feel sick just thinking about eating right now, which is not a good step. What the hell is going on with me? You know the "in recovery we trust" mantra I never lose hold of? I'm losing hold of it.
I know what's going on. In an already difficult climate (crazy parents, final exams, isolation, hard therapy-work) I am missing Rogers to the point I literally feel nauseous all the time. I feel like I'm giving myself ulcers, honestly. And Brea doesn't write back and Stacy doesn't write back, and it's just like, what the hell do I do if the only two people who promised to stay in touch aren't doing so?
And then, there's this thing. Sara's not doing well. (Which of course, with my heart directly connected to hers, makes me crazy. Why, why, why does the world and the illness and all of this have to be so bad for her?) So, she might be going into the hospital, which means she might be going back to Rogers. I think she talked to Dave yesterday. When she told me she'd left Dave a message and he was going to call her, I felt what I always feel: inferior or left out or some combination of the two. Because calling Dave is, I think (perhaps wrongly), what I've needed to do for months now. And that need is intensifying as I think of Sara going back. I need to say things, none of which sound pretty, and hear the no-bullshit answers. I need to decide where I'm going because I'm afraid if I don't I'll dive backward into the living death. And I can't do that. I can't because if I did this whole past year-and-almost-two would seem to mean so much less than it does.
But I need to say, Dave, you know how upset I was when I was leaving, how I was just so crazy, so broken, over it, and crying all the time and not at all ok? Well, that hasn't really changed over the past almost-two-years. I've managed really well in spite of it, (I'm doing so well) but it hasn't changed. I miss you guys so much, and I cry all the time over it, and I think all the time over it, and Rogers remains in me this safe and wonderful and consistently supportive place, the only one I've ever had, and a remarkably different environment from the one I'm in...and Dave, I'm calling *you* because I need the no-bullshit answer that is not spoken just to make me feel better; I need a for-real reply here. I need to know if this is ok. Is it ok if I love all of you, and continue to love you, and claim you as my (first?) home? Is that ok?
...Then listen to me. I have given impossible effort to the cause of my recovery. I have gotten better in spite of just about every contributing factor in my life. I have gotten better in spite of poor therapists, crazy parents, complete social isolation, school, constant and overwhelming homesickness, the lack of a nearby support system, etc, etc, etc. I have done this; I have continued to do this. And I will tell you what I have told myself: that if I didn't die when Tracy did, nothing can kill me. There is nothing to relapse over if I'm making it through that- because nothing can ever be worse than that. So Dave I'm asking you how I keep going when I can't see accurately. When my mind is making up cause/effect schemes that aren't real, when it seems so much like the reward of my recovery has been the loss of home and the people that I love. I know I couldn't love if I were (still actively, seriously) sick, and I know that my life would be hell, or gone entirely...I know that. I also know that I am not supposed to be the one person getting better. I'm not supposed to be the one who wins. And I hate myself for saying this where other people can hear, but I don't want the prize. I don't want to win because I don't want the prize. I don't want to be sick - God, I don't want to be sick - but I want to come back, too. I want to come back, too. Please. I need you to tell me what I do with this. With only wanting a place I have to be sick to go.
And you know I don't really want to be there, not with all that sickness, not with all that hell. I don't really want to be there, where I can't escape from it, where I'm once again "the healthy one" despite how bad *I* feel. I want to get better, Dave, and I need your help (again) because...getting better has to mean more than I-haven't-binged-or-purged-one-time-since-I-was-admitted and I'm-not-restricting and I've-worked-through-a-lot. Somewhere along the line, it has to start meaning that I'm living the life that feels good. And the life that feels good is still housed in Wisconsin, in a little brown building I could draw flawless blueprints of...
I don't know why it has to be you, but it has to be you. You have to tell me what to do, Dave. And then I'll get better, and I'll work with this amazing doctor I have who is so good, and I'll try not to worry about how hard your job is or how you're managing since you lost Tracy. I'll try - I'll even try - to pull myself away, if that's what's best. But you've got to tell me how first, and why. You've got to tell me what to do when I'm dealing not with an eating disorder, but with grief. Grief for the only home I ever wanted to claim. You've got to tell me if I have the right to claim it. And now. I need to know now. So I can know I'm not losing Sara the way I feel I lost you- so that her connection again to Rogers doesn't mean a loss. But, no, Sara and I can work that out ourselves. I need to know now because it's been too long. It's gotten to be too much. And I am in danger here, Dave. To hell with pride, I need you to answer me.
Whhhhhhhyyyyyy can't I pick up a phone???
chord
*that's a really uncool plural, now that I type it
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