8:36 p.m. - 12/30/03
(you're under mountains now :: but someday you will rise .. like the tide)
It looks like those people who've been holding onto me most recently and promising that the New Year really isn't that far away were actually telling some sort of truth. New Year's Eve Eve, and who could have convinced me I'd be this relieved to reach it? I remember last New Year's; I believe I even wrote about my not-so-upbeat opinion on the holiday, how it's poorly scheduled, has an unnecessarily high tendency to trigger memories regarding my eating disorder, and unfairly forceful in its attempt to make people turn a new page and resolve for a new life, whether that's actually the point they're at or not. Why is it different this year? I suppose I actually am ready to turn over some new leaf. I actually am ready to leave chordchild behind and move into new, familiar but not entirely memorized ground. I need some reason to believe that the trend of negative events in my life will not continue, and as little stock as I've placed in this holiday throughout the past few years, I'm willing to use it to my advantage and pretend it has the necessary magic powers. Certainly, the doctor's return will cast some spell in my favor, although I'm not altogether without worry, even when I consider having him back. I feel, in many ways, like I've spent this past month boarding up the doors and windows as best I could, against - well, I suppose - "a sea of troubles" - and I worry that even using the most ginger process, the examination of those mechanisms I've used to seal myself in recently will not be painless. And I don't expect to open my doors to suddenly fair weather. I don't believe I imagined the difficulty and danger I had to protect myself against, and as good as the doctor is at pacing our work and making sure I don't, er, drown ... I worry that even he will be surprised at the wreck I am after a month away. I can't tell for certain if I'm really a wreck, or if Aunt Sue has just stuck around for an extended holiday visit...but I don't feel particularly good about where I am. Then again, one might attribute my not feeling particularly good to the incessant abuse of my perfectionist voices, and venture the theory that if I'd stop judging myself for where I am, I'd stop feeling so poorly about it. It's not like I need to beat at myself to get moving; goodness knows I'll make progress somehow... I actually yelled something similar to that at the Aunt-Sue-voice a few days ago. I was curled up in my bed looking like a small pile of human crumbs, sobbing and hurting and grieving whatever I needed to grieve. And as that's happening, as I'm trying to calm myself down and take care of these overwhelming feelings, this voice pipes up about how I'm not eating whatever meal I normally eat around that time, and therefore I'm not going to eat, and therefore I'm relapsing, and therefore I'm an ungrateful, incapable, undeserving freak whose entire life has already been lost due to a lack of effort. I swear I would have attacked the voice with physical force if it lived somewhere other than inside me. As it stood, I retorted (aloud, actually) that the one thing (a bit bitterly, the one thing) I've proven I can do, the one thing I seem incapable of not doing, is to stay on track with my food. If I were going to miss that meal, which I wasn't, then I have to assume I'd rectify it and be back on track again before the next meal. I've gotten to a point in my recovery where an actively present eating disorder surprises me, and as annoying as that can be (I convince myself I'm no longer sick and then beat myself up when I feel sick or think sick and so forth), it does give me a good background. That's one shady "recovery" voice that likes to kick me when I'm already down. I realize it wants to keep me down; I realized that even before I reached the chapter in Ben Stein's How to Ruin Your Life on perfectionism (I'm currently reading that and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, a very bizarre combination, but nonetheless entertaining.) To summarize, I've started kicking back.
I just didn't realize until last night how much abuse I was throwing at myself for the way that I've felt this past month. Yes, my successes are negative, they are - almost completely - made up of what I've managed not to do, but those are still successes. As Sara told me last night (talk about a step in the right direction; I *called someone* when I was feeling like shit, and while I was on the phone, I let myself break down and cry and talk and receive support...hello, success) there's a whole continuum between "sick" and "well" - and if I could expect to get better without guidance, I wouldn't be in therapy to begin with. If one could get out of this labyrinth on one's own, psychiatrists would be out of their jobs, Rogers wouldn't exist, and people wouldn't die from it. I'd forgotten that piece. I'd forgotten some other rather important points as well. For instance, I am not going to feel the way I've felt recently forever. (She had a really good analogy about a panic attack only being able to last so long - I think it was twenty minutes - because after that the body cannot maintain the panicked state anymore and the system *has* to calm down.) Also, getting well is a process, and my desire to show people a "strong" version of myself can keep me from being honest about where I am at any particular moment. Sara's doing really well right now, and there were points, both while I was speaking with her and afterward, when I actually thought things like, "Now she's the strong one, and I'm weak." My "Strong One" and "Healthy One" labels. Here's a problem with those labels. They're wrong. They're worse than the vegetarian soup mixes that secretly use chicken broth; they proclaim to the world that I don't need things I do need. Thereby, their insistence that I am well actually delays the day when I truly might be. Sucky labels. I need to add fallibility to my list of ingredients. I really, really do. And I need to find out why I'm still trying to prove I'm perfect, when the word alone feels metallic and makes the hairs on my neck bristle.
I think I'm really scared by how not ok I've been this past month. I've taken seriously decent care of myself, but so many days that's meant sleeping more than I was awake, or spending significantly less time outside of the apartment. I know that, before the doctor got sick, I was already freaked out by the reality that I had this major anxiety disorder, this agoraphobic insanity that's been breeding since I was pre-school age or younger, to fight. Relatively speaking, the eating disorder was so new and so quick, and it's taken so much effort to progress on that front; I can't imagine how difficult the anxiety disorder will be. Even over the holiday, my sister came to me talking about an experience she'd had getting a medical exam, how it had sucked but nevertheless she had to do it, and my response internally was, "I have to run away from that. I have to stay young. I have to keep safe and away." It took until I'd hung up the phone with my (other, wonderful) Sara for me to realize that I could keep track of these situations which make me feel like I'd rather never be an adult and learn other ways of approaching and handling them, like I've done with so many formerly impossible things, rather than just assuming I have to either be brutalized by a situation or end up brutalizing myself in an attempt to avoid it. I need to stop thinking in terms like, "Well, I'd rather die because they didn't find the cancer in time then have to go and get that check-up." News flash: that's more than a little black-and-white, and black-and-white (while a classic fashion strategy) is a sucky, sickly way of thinking. The doctor is right. My experience over the past few years is right. The situations don't all have to change. When you know methods you can use to deal with them or when the way you feel about the situations has changed, you can be safe in the most unlikely place. And I am going to be safe, damnit. I am going to be safe and healthy and strong and visibly dimensional, visibly imperfect and in need, even. I just need a hell of a lot of help in getting there, and that's why the doctor is coming back at the first of the year. He's coming back! I wonder if he'll understand how grateful I am for that. We both wish that it were something I could take for granted, but knowing better, I hope he'll understand how much it means to me that after he went away, he *came back.* Like so many others didn't. Like he said he always would.
Today's tearful session - it seems to be at least one a day now - waited until after the phone call (though I did manage to spend the majority of today awake, and I even went on a mission to secure yarn). Again I talked with a Sara(h), this time my sister, and this time because she'd called me to talk theater-company-talk. She's talking about seriously clarifying the goal of the company, so that we can establish ourselves for real, so that people know what to expect in terms of the product, but not so that we feel confined to one role and understanding that we can do whatever the hell we want, but we may not do everything with this company. I was pretty honest, talking with her. It's hard for me to understand a lot of where she's coming from because my process has pretty much been the same for every show we've done. I spend a few non-sequential days writing a script, I send it to her, we discuss it, we cast, we discuss it, rehearsals begin, we discuss it some more, I do a bit of word-tweaking here and there, and next thing you know, I'm in New York and the piece is up and running. Whee. For Sarah, the process for each piece has not been so similar, and she's talking about the first play being the most like what we think we want to do, and I'm asking her how that works in terms of my contribution, considering that I've developed away from the way that play was written, and I don't have a concept of the differences in rehearsals because, hi, I'm not in New York. Speaking of which, as far as constricting our roles goes - there's nothing I can do for this company except write, so long as I'm at such a distance. And the collaborative, organically built work she's talking of creating, the work that draws from everyone, that uses the "script", which isn't so much a script, as a jumping-off point rather than a blueprint of the finished project isn't necessarily what I want. I don't want to hand her bits and pieces I find interesting and see what the company is able to build off of them. I don't like having that little control in what's going on with my writing, and what's more, I don't like feeling disconnected from it. I can't write bits and pieces. Sarah kept bringing up certain scenes in certain shows and how they were everyone's favorite parts, and why did those parts have to be within a play; what if they were just those parts? I don't work that way. I write from characters, and I can't see myself committing to the characters enough to write for them, and then letting the company extract one scene they like and play around with it...
Perhaps even more importantly, do you notice how I'm mentioning "the company" as if it doesn't include me? That's a much bigger deal than any of the other questions. I know that Sarah and I can come up with a vision we both support; I know that we have that much commonality in our art. However. (And this is surprisingly hard to say/ type, even when it isn't to her.) I don't want to be an artist. I don't want to be a playwright when I grow up. And the first thing I said to the people who ride my imagination and keep me company when I don't have anyone else to talk to, after hanging up the phone was something like, "Allow me to say something completely based in black-and-white thinking for a moment." I don't want to be a playwright. Does it have to be that dichotomous? I am or I'm not; I do this or I don't. Hell no. But there's truth in that statement that is seriously important truth. I will, more likely than not, always write. I will probably always write creatively. I may even always write plays, and I may stay interested in seeing those plays reach production. However. I don't want to pursue playwriting. I'm so entirely confused when it comes to my future; I'm struggling to survive the present and I try not to think too much about what will be...the doctor's even advised me not to. But I think this is more than just the fact that I'm eighteen and Sarah's twenty-five. This is something similar to telling her my name is Mary Brave (and no wonder I'm scared to do so, considering how that went over)...I don't want to make art. Even incredible, important art. If I make it, fine, but I don't want to run after that goal. Even if I run after a different version of it, even if instead of writing the Great American Novel, I push the boundaries of poetry and theater and what can be done on-stage. Despite how much more enticing that is to me, it's still not enough. I believe the artist makes an invaluable contribution to society; I believe that the artist has a vital role in sustaining people through life and dealing with the tough issues in the world...I really don't mean to minimize that. But that's not the way I need to interact with the wrongs I know in the world. It's not enough for me. The play I'm most wrapped around right now is "Steep" - it's a short one-act about two girls, sickness, and the decision to stay or leave. I'm wrapped up in it because it's about I've been dealing with- because I thought we'd be presenting it as early as the next EDAW (late February)...because its electric and might help people. But when I think about it, I don't want to use theater to teach people who don't know what I do. And I don't want to use theater to sympathize with, support, or guide people going through similarly rough times. I'd rather give someone a hug than a piece of paper; it's just true. And the fact that I've been So Gifted In Writing since the dawn of memory doesn't change that. I have other gifts, too. And I have certain needs related to those gifts. I have an ability to attach that the makers of Velcro would kill to know the secret of - and because of this, I need to be with people, affecting and being affected as people, even if I don't quite know how yet. I don't know what I want to do; I don't know how I want to help... but Sarah said something early on in the conversation about how we've been working on this (company) for the past three years, and instantly, I was overwhelmed with thoughts of what the past three years have meant for me. The experiences with RMM are honestly incredible, and I don't want to minimize them. Still. Asked what I've put effort into the past few years, what I've worked at, I would probably forget to mention the plays. Asked what I've helped develop over the past few years, it'd be so so low on the list. And asked what has mattered to me, shaped me, been my life, it wouldn't even make the same stratosphere. I want to say I chose to be sick and it happened quickly because I want to choose to be better and implement that just as quickly. Still, the statement isn't true. I have to work my way through a new perspective, the opposite perspective - in many ways - from the one I've held until now: the one where Rogers has sharp edges and deep shadows, the one where maybe I wish I hadn't gotten sick. I've been doing a lot of not-so-healthy thinking because I want to avoid this...I'm terrified of this picture I have in my head: this idea that I stumbled into sickness so randomly, and now my entire life is built around it (and always will be.) Again, that's extreme. But there's truth in it. I can't draw or write or sing anything that will make Tracy live in this world as she did. I can't create any piece that will heal the impossible pain I've endured with this illness. Knowing another person fraught with the pain of loving someone sick or being someone sick, I would not want to hand them words. I don't know where my niche is, or what gift I have that's worth more than the one for which I've always received the most commendation... but I can't do it. Maybe five years ago, I could have finished high school, gone to a university, gotten a degree, and lived the life everyone imagined for me... maybe I could have built my life around RMM. But it's not enough to me to have people gather in a dark room for an hour of theater, even if it's theater that will genuinely challenge, change, or support them. I was happiest at Rogers, where my writing was both supported and banned. I need to find a way to tell my sister that, as impossible as it is to understand, living at Rogers, having that family, experiencing such a miracle, and having it so viciously attacked ever since...has changed me. Has changed what I need to do. Maybe I don't get it now, maybe I don't feel like myself just this moment, but I do know that I can't let this be me. Or the central part of me. Or what I pretend is my goal. It isn't fair to Sarah, it isn't fair to the other members of the company, and it definitely isn't fair to Mary, who's gone through three hella hard years to know who she isn't, and will spend the rest of her life - give or take a few hours - figuring out who she is.
Who I am, in first person even.
chord
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