Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

9:15 ish - 11/04/03
thought contortions.
I forgot how smooth and low your voice is, like a B-flat clarinet. velveteen and alto. I forgot, somehow, the way you say my name, and the confidence of your words, and even though I don't want it - I don't want you to be confident when it's so impossible that things are as ok as you're making them sound - part of me wants to believe you. I understand how I fell for it before, when I knew better on some level; I understand how I fell for it before...because you're so easy to follow. you mesmerize me, and I want you to be the way that you sound, which I can't imagine being real. and I don't want you to be saying that you meant to stay in touch or that you're not up to talking, but I'm glad to be saying some of what I've dared myself, these past few days, to say. That I will not leave you so easily this time. That I will be in your life, not to be invasive, but because I can't bear being out of it. I will call when you don't want to talk, sometimes, because it's unbearable not to know how you are. It's unbearable to think of all those bad days and nights you had and how I was sitting at 'home' talking myself out of calling you because you didn't need the bother, you hadn't responded, you were probably ok. I wanted you to know it will be different this time, so that I can know it, too. you know, my brother said tonight - during an evening of madness following a day of insanity - that your body obviously wanted to get better and the rest of you would catch up. I think that's brilliant. but you scare me with your confidence. your toughness frightens me. Sara's emotional extremes and desire to save you frighten me. I feel less safe, not in my own life, but in my certainty around each of yours. I looked up the miles between the address I gave you and the one you gave me, and it's not much more than two hours. Do you know how easily we could do that or do the one-hour midpoint? I'm scared because you say you're probably going home this weekend and whether that's just your reason not to give me your address at the hospital or something you're actually doing, it frightens me. how can you be physically stable considering where you were a week ago? how can you be ready? and even though I feel like you're made of miracles right now, considering it all, even though I like the prospect of you two hours away...oh, I hope you'll have good groups and therapists and parents and everything you need. and I hope when I tell you you're stronger than you are tough, you'll hear me. I hope we who love you will get through when we call you on what scares us. I hope some nights you'll let me take care of you.

tonight is a night I wouldn't mind being taken care of - or actually, it's a night I wouldn't mind having a friend like the doctor so upset me by suggesting - a friend who is stable and healthy and so forth. and I know - I have those friends. I could call Chas or Brooke or whomever right now, and I could vent to them, and they'd be ok with that, I know. but sometimes I feel like the people who don't go through these sorts of things don't want to hear about them or can't understand them. and the people who do understand are so fragile and sick, I won't tell them. maybe it's just an excuse to keep myself from sharing anything, I don't know. it's crazy because at the same time I'm reaching new heights of drama over this shit with expanding my life, it's becoming clearer and clearer that I need to do so. the line from the last entry - the phrase, "his diversification project" - is so untrue. It's my project. It's something I've been working for and needing for so long, and I'm trying to deny that. I'm trying to say it doesn't make a difference if my friends are ill or aren't. people with mental illnesses are just as good as people without them; my friends are the best friends in the world, and I'll maul anyone who says otherwise. but. this morning, I was frightened because I've been so depressed today and yesterday, and my eating's been weird with the loss of appetite and the icky feelings. I tried to focus on what the doctor and I talked about, how rigidity is part of this illness, too - how it's not important at this point in my recovery to be so "perfect" about meals (the way I needed to be before), but instead I kept feeling guilty and ashamed because I convinced myself I was slipping and thought I was a horrible person for that. I thought about how Sara thanked me for helping her through a difficult night, and what a fraud I was, what she would think if she knew that for all my perfect lines, I was really just a relapsing idiot. I thought about Dave and how I told him I wasn't using my ed, and I felt like slime because obviously that's a lie, so not only am I a relapsing idiot, I'm a relapsing idiotic liar, which is a high crime in my hierarchy. I managed to pull myself out of several of those thoughts later. I went for a walk (hard - due to agoraphobic/ social anxiety, depressive desire to isolate, and the voice in my head yelling about how I wasn't eating properly and therefore was not allowed to walk because walking would be exercise, and then I'd really mess myself up.) The walk didn't go as well as intended; there were police officers on a crucial turn, so I avoided my intended path and had to take a shorter one. Worse yet we have the most anti-Autumn whether imaginable, saved only by a slight breeze. there is no crisp air to help me salvage myself. but I found a bench, and I wrote some oh-so-recoveryish statements down...things like, "I feel", and "I recognize", and "I'm willing"...I took stock of what's been going on and also wrote down why it wasn't so bad as my head was making it out to be (which my illness says is just justification, but see, my illness likes to take recovery ideas and pervert them to confuse me into thinking it's not my illness). I even wrote down that when I spoke with Dave, I was doing nothing eating-disordered. That over the last few days weirdness in my eating has been either due to mood-funk or being at Joe's; there was no ed-d motivation behind it. the first eating disorder thoughts I had, I had this morning, and that's when I started freaking out. I'd just tried to call Jenna, and the phone had rung several zillion times, and then I tried to call her again, and I heard someone pick up the phone and put it down. I was like, "Did someone just hang up on me?" but the phone didn't go dead, and I could hear people talking in the background...someone had taken it off the hook. I didn't have the energy to yell, "Hello!" into the phone until someone responded, so I hung up, and of course when I tried again, it was busy.

at that point I flipped out a little. I was sitting on my bed in my pajamas, feeling crappy and rejected; my tummy was poking out from under my tank top, and just like that the ed thoughts start pouring in. I turned my ears off pretty quickly, so I didn't hear much of it - but the one fear that managed to grab hold really frightened me. It was the idea that I had, by letting myself be loose with eating over the last few days (which I would later realize was a perfectly ok course at the time, one that was right to change today but didn't need to be used to abuse me, that wasn't "wrong" to have used until now) would keep me from being able to get back on track. I wouldn't be able to start eating "normally" again, and that meant I was going to relapse, and that meant my life was crashing in around me. eventually, the writing cleared my head, I fought off the depression with the walk and a few other things, and I developed an appetite. I had some very decent snacks and a really balanced, wonderful dinner (that was tasty, too) ... so there really wasn't much validity in the fear. I just have this annoying problem, maybe I haven't mentioned it before, where I assume everyone expects perfection from me, and when I don't live up to that, I feel lower than dirt. if I'm feeling shamed. which I was. now I just feel crabby. I slept really shittily last night, spent a good part of the day trying to sleep for real, didn't manage it but aided the depression through the attempt... I'm walking in circles in my head around what the hell my track in life is going to be, what my next step is. I'm pacing between the fear of expanding my life outside of illness and recovery (and understanding that I can meet whatever needs I think this "mentally ill" label meets, in other ways, understanding that I'm multi-faceted enough that such expansion would relate to me, would not be random clutter thrown into my life; strangers would *become* friends, et cetera) and the desperation (but lack of knowledge on how) to do so. my brother came over tonight, and he just really grated on my nerves. I don't know how to explain it; he kept interrupting me so that I couldn't get a word in. he kept telling these stories and these jokes and not letting me tell stories or jokes. he monopolized the conversation, and everything was about him, and some of it was so stupid. like, he said three times that going to msn makes him want to kill himself. I was trying to spit out something I learned on msn today (when I was checking the distance between my apartment and Jenna's abode), but I couldn't get it out because he was talking about how he hates the main page at msn, how he could never read it, how it makes him want to kill himself. and I was like, well, forget it, I was just there because I needed a map, and usually I avoid it, too; I don't like it either - to which he said, all hushed and advising, "psst...mapquest." and I was like would you shut the fuck up? I know about mapquest, I understand there are other places I could have gone here; I have a fucking story to tell. he had just come from the doctor and he was all pissed off because things aren't going the way he wants them to, and so he's sort of putting a time limit on how much longer he's willing to do this. he's giving the doctor only so many more chances, that sort of thing. and Mom's like, have you *told* the doctor this? have you *talked* to him about what feels wrong, or even that something does? and he hasn't. he walks out of therapy and he bitches about how he's not understood (and I even told him that "the doctor's been off lately; I called him on it this week") but he won't take any steps to communicate this in the situation. it's so frustrating. it's so frustrating to me. and I guess I was already pretty frustrated considering what a hard day I was having, and that he has an open invitation to come to my apartment every Tuesday, even though I never said I liked that idea...and most of the time, it's fine, but when times are sucky, I don't always want to spend my night with him. but because he's my brother and not, say, a friend of my mom's, I feel obligated to stay with him until he leaves. and nights like tonight, it's stupid to do so. I get frustrated, he knows I'm frustrated; it's really fucked up. and it occurred to me before he came that this is yet another reason I need to expand on my life. I need to diversify, so that I could make a plan for a Tuesday night if I felt like it, go out with a friend, swing by the library. "Oh, Mary's out doing such-and-such tonight." that would be ok. being in the apartment and not interacting with him isn't ok. but if, in general, I could just *get out* when I didn't want to be around whomever my mom invited, when I wanted to be by myself...that would help. and in order to do that, my life needs to include more than it does right now.

and yes, I talked to Jenna today. this afternoon. it's her voice I'm comparing to a clarinet, her voice that's velveteen. I called again in the afternoon, and I had no idea who I was talking to - staff or patient or someone totally random - but I asked for Jenna, and she came to the phone. She said hello a few times, and I was like, "Jenna? Jenna?" and then I could hear that she wasn't hearing me, and I was like - please don't play a game with me; please just talk to me - but the operator was saying, "if you'd like to make a call..." so I hung up. and picked the phone back up. same voice answered. "hi, I just called a minute ago to talk with Jenna? - and...I think we were disconnected?" and the voice says, yes, she's right here, and gives the phone to this other voice, this Jenna voice, that I don't even recognize at first...that's so different from everything I've been imagining as I think about her, as I forget her in the context of what's happening. and then my memory jumps into action, and I can tell that this is Jenna, and we talk. she tells me I was one of the people she wanted to stay in touch with, that she even had a letter of mine so she would have my address, but somehow it got out of her hands. and I was like, Jenna don't do this, don't say this...(but maybe it's true.) my god, the wanting to believe her versus the need to know the truth. she said she wasn't really up to talking, asked how I got the number. when I told her Sara gave it to me, she seemed as upset as she ever seems, and she said that Sara hadn't really understood that she wasn't up to talking right now. I told her that from my perspective, we did understand that (Sara and I) - we just care about her and can't handle not knowing how she is. then she brushed it aside as if it were all ok, and asked for my address so she could write me. I gave it to her, then asked for hers. she gave me her home address, and I asked if she knew the one at the hospital; if she planned to be there awhile, I'd write her there. she told me she planned to be home by the weekend, and I fell apart thinking how I've never known anyone to get better at home. it must be possible; it must be... but I've never known anyone in an outpatient setting who managed to pull it together. I know people who did so, and I know people, like myself, who are managing to continue a strong recovery after the hospital, but I've never known one person - not one - who was getting better without going inpatient or residential. and Jenna's spell is so strong I want to believe she can do it. and my understanding that I can't save her is so deep that I plan to support her, as I can, wherever she is, and leave the decisions about where that needs to be to her doctors, parents, self. I just have to stay in the picture. I just have to stay honest. I'll be a terrific pest if I have to; I really will.

I guess the truth right now is I don't feel like anyone can really understand me, and that feels so arrogant, I don't know where to go with it. I don't feel understood by people in the "sick" category because I've moved beyond so much of that, I don't feel understood by people in the "recovering" category because they're so often inspired by me...no one seems to be at whatever stage I'm at. no one acts like we're at eye level, and that's hard. it would be nice to know someone who's doing better than I am, someone who isn't recovered entirely but is really doing well...like an AA sponsor, minus the twelve-step stuff. and I guess it would be nice just to have a friend, but...it's like with college. I feel too developed for college. I feel like I have too many facets, too many stories, too many directions to come from and go in...I don't feel like anyone could connect to me on more than one or two commonalities. and I guess I'm starting to feel more like a list of labels and less like an essential person with whom people, even of really different lives and backgrounds, could feel a desire to connect.

I don't feel like I'm better than anyone. I know that many people think of me as extraordinary, and I value that; I've even learned to believe that. But I believe everyone else is also extraordinary; they simply haven't learned to access how yet. I can easily turn this into a paragraph on how I actually think everyone is better than me, and they just don't know it yet...but that would mean turning my head over to the shame-mongrels, and I'm not in the mood for that. I think I'm having an identity crisis...though maybe that's obvious. actually, it's not a crisis because I know I can take care of myself through it; it's no emergency...it's just an issue. but I don't know where it came from. Jenna reappeared, scared the hell out of us, Sara and I connected more, I re-understood that we're different, we continued to talk more often, I went to Nashville, came back and had a not-so-productive (in the moment...a lot of times, these screwy, frustrating sessions work out really well) session with the doctor. am I missing something? maybe the relationshit is a factor. I certainly wanted to toss that out as the cause when things started to be screwy. "it's because we started talking about this! things were fine before that." maybe it is. not in the, "so we should just stop talking about it" way I'd prefer, but in the way that it's a big deal even when we don't bring it up, and there's the possibility it's affecting things. it's a huge issue, and it certainly could be causing some ripples below the surface. I just don't know. this is one of those times when I feel like my brain is being stretched in every possible direction, and if it doesn't snap in the process, it will probably come back in better shape to understand. the strain in strength, I guess. I should probably attempt to distract myself from what I don't understand before I pull something. the labor metaphor comes to mind. "no matter how hard you work, no matter how fast you go, no matter how much time you invest in it everyday, this baby will still need a gestation period of nine months." oy. I do believe in the power of my own actions, but some of these things that insist on coming up in their own time get on my nerves. it's like they don't even care how the delay affects me. silly heartless issues.

silly confused chordling

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!