2:15 ish - 10/26/03
you know that I.i will.il follow you...
(the letter to no one and everyone, as appropriate...)
Jenna. JENNA! Why aren't you listening to me? Why aren't you even letting me talk to you? Those same damn walls you had two years ago, two years stronger, with two years more illness hidden behind them. But it's not hidden. I know. I saw through you the first time you were at Rogers; I saw through and I *knew* that you needed to stop being so tough, so cool, so "ok." STOP BEING A WARRIOR. please. fall the fuck apart. let them help you put yourself back together. be a weepy, scattered mess; it's the only way. DO NOT go back and bullshit them again. we're running out of chances, and I can't lose you. I won't lose you. the world is not done with you yet, even if you're ready to be done with the world. you can't fairly hate yourself never having known her. I know you. I know some little bit of you, and that little bit is enough to make me crazy. Jenna, please. Please. Answer the phone. Let me tell you hi and I love you and hang up. I don't expect anything from you. I don't want to lecture you or inspire you; I don't want to force you back into recovery. I just want to hear your voice for the first time in two years. I want you to hear mine telling you I care, even if that hurts you; I care, and I want you to know. I want to be at your bedside, don't you know that? I want to be invisible, around for no one else but you. I want to be the one that you can lean on. I want to sit and eat with you. I want to hold you, be your blanket. I want you to see me weeping and not feel guilty; just let it free your tears. Let it free your pain. Get that damn pain out of you, so you can get life back in. I can't lose you, Jenna. I won't lose you. I won't lose you again. I have been fighting people all week on the "there's a reason for everything" philosophy because this is not supposed to be happening, this is not meant to be, this is not reasonable...but I will tell you something. There was a reason that Sara happened to be on the inpatient floor the night you came in for a few *hours* before being rushed to the city ICU. There's a reason that, that same night, while you two were talking, while I had no idea what was going on, my grief over Rogers intensified, and even as I wrote that I had to quit feeling it, I ended up piling myself with memories and holding on. I thought of the story I've thought of a million times - the day you got bored in check-in and painted my toenails with wite-out. I've thought of that story a million times, and Thursday night, for no reason that I knew, I actually grabbed a bottle of wite-out and painted them again. I've never done that. Don't you understand? Sara was there to meet you, to tell me; I was here, painting my toenails with wite-out...you have to let me in. You have to. You can't keep doing this, Jenna. You can't understand how much I love you and then push me out again. You can't tell the people on the inpatient ward that you and Sara (and me, as well) are sisters, and then refuse to answer my calls. You have to take one, sweetie; please. You have to quit taking care of me, quit being tough, quit being cool, quit being Artemis. Just be Jenna. Be a wreck for a little while, where it's safe to be a wreck. PLEASE. Fall apart before it's too late.
And Dave...I'm praying (or something to that effect) with every atom in me that she ends up back with you. Back at the EDC. I'm praying that tomorrow or the next day, she's back inpatient, and a week or two weeks after that, she's back on second floor. That's my hope. Dave, don't let her bullshit this time; please. Don't let her mess with the words and turn your questions back around and make a sport of it; don't! let! her! You have to stop her, please. You have to make her put down the shields and dry up the moats, and break apart the walls. You have to help her, Dave; you have to. And I hate that because I know it isn't possible for you to save her, I know that her recovery is hers...but I can't lose her, Dave. I can't lose her, so you've got to make sure that no one lets her fool her way through again. She has to get really better, truly, honestly better. Ok? You have to make sure. Please. Fuck responding to my letter. Just listen to this. You have to make sure that she's really crumbling, so that when she looks better, she really *is* better.
Please make sure...
How do you do it? How do you work with this illness everyday? How do you go in and meet it, in person after person? How do you keep admitting people who are barely alive, sending the healthy ones back into the world, staying with the near-dead? How do you DO it? Because I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm trying, but I'm no good at this. I'm no good at being with this pain. I want to take out that part of me that attaches so strongly, that feels so strongly. I want to take it out and run. Flee. I want to get out of this world, my world, where tragedy stacks on top of tragedy, and I'm below the weight of it all. How do you do this? I can't do this. I can't keep saying, "I'm going to take this week just to acclimate" and then bam! bam! bam! more pain. MORE PAIN. How is it possible????? How is it possible to give one person all of this? I no longer believe I'm being given only as much as I can handle. I no longer believe that. Somewhere, someone is floating through life without the slightest awareness of pain. All their pain has been mis-addressed and is being given to me. On top of my own. And for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm ready to leave Rogers. Like I'd be ready to leave if I were there. For the first time, I'm wishing that I'd never gotten sick, never had to go, never had to know. Because despite everyone I wouldn't know and all the parts of myself that wouldn't be, I would not have to suffer like this. I would not have to sit in my room with a blanket over my head trying to distract myself from the fact that Jenna's life is hanging in the balance.
Every time I say I'm not strong enough to take all this, there's more. I've been not strong enough to take this for months now, and week by week, pain just keeps getting added. And me? I want a white room again. I want a hospital bed. Better yet, I want a cave far, far away, where people check on me four times a day. I want to go somewhere where I'm the sick one. I want to go somewhere where I'm not the one who's, relatively, better. I should not be the epitome of anything; I should not be emulated. I'm still in hell. But I'm far enough out of that one hell that I have to be "the healthy one" watching others fall and break and fall and break and fall. And I don't want it! I don't want that role! I don't want that title!
It's true, I want to be well, but I can't be the only one. I can't, I can't, I can't! PLEASE.
chord
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