1:59 p.m. - 01/24/02
it may be a dirge; but this dance is mine.
"she fills the pot with water/ and she drops in the bone/ she says, i've got a darkness that i have to feed/ i got a sadness that grows up around me like a weed/ and i'm not hurting anyone/ i'm just spiraling in/ and then she closes her eyes/ and hears the song begin again
"she appreciates the phone calls/ the consoling cards and such/ she appreciates all the people/ who come by and try to pull her back in touch/ they try to hold the lid down tightly/ and they try to shake well/ but the oil and water/ they just wanna separate themselves..."
yes my jukebox is fit to ani's today; I would call that my song, if the next track wouldn't be the same.
*
harriet replied, apologizing for how long it took her (a day?) and saying she was going to be brief so we could discuss things more thoroughly in person. tomorrow. at least I got a good hour of sleep this afternoon. perhaps I won't look like some drugged zombie in her office come morning. it was the sleep I crave- the kind that's so dead afterward I'm not sure I've slept, but then I see the lines on my face from where the pillow has reshaped it. I move too much in my sleep to get those lines. this was more like a short coma. mmmmm, coma.
I started crying at the end of her reply, not that that's so uncommon these days. She mentioned The Girl, and all anyone has to do is say that name, and I feel the tightening in my chest and the tears jumping to burn my eyes. I pray there never comes a day when I can't cry over this. I don't want to feel that much like stone.
Rereading it now, I see she has a lot of questions, (as do I) and I want to get my thoughts in order for when I see her. As much as possible anyway. She's concerned about how much power I'm giving her, and I am, too. I'm concerned because if I'm handing over my power that easily (to someone who I really doubt is trying to control or manipulate me; i.e. someone who isn't even trying to take it), that's certainly call for concern. It also worries me because I say she has the power to destroy me, (instead of, perhaps, the power to "heal" me) which means I really am cycling, and perhaps confirms that it's my power I'm giving her, as I've been convinced for sometime the only power I have is a malignant, detrimental kind.
She talks about how I'm resisting her, how I don't speak up so she can hear me, how when she makes suggestions I fight her on them, tell her why they won't work. Partly, that's my fear of her, my fear that she doesn't understand, if she doesn't who will, that means I'm alone, etc. But I've been thinkinga bout it, sitting here, and it occurs to me that if I've given her my power, then maybe it's my own power I'm afraid of. My own ability to get better. I don't know why exactly I'm scared of that right now, but it does make logical sense, and in the face of all of this, some logic is ever so appreciated.
Part of it could be because of Tracy. I feel so much guilt for being the one who survived. I'm so convinced it should have been me, not her, but I think there's more to it than that, not just that it should have been me, but that I'm afraid it *will* be me. I'm afraid that Tracy knew the truth, that there isn't a way out, that people really don't understand, and that you either feel crazy for the rest of your life, or feel in control for the one second before the pills kick in and the seizures start.
Oh, god Tracy...I hope you're somewhere beautiful.
Fuck.
She wants to know if I want to quit seeing her. I wish I knew. Red taught me that sometimes the people you have the hardest time connecting to, and who hurt you the most, are the ones who end up helping you. But at Red, it was safe for them to hurt me; I stayed in a safe place afterward, with 20-some other people I could talk to...I don't have that luxury here. It's amazing how many redluxuries feel like necessities when they were once there.
I don't want to run, but I need so badly to have someone I feel really understands me, someone I actually *see* face-to-face in my week-by-week world, and even though I want that to not be her because I don't want to be so dependent on therapy as my reason for living, who else do I have? Until I work through all the different anxieties, and can push myself into the outside world, who else can it be?
She says she hears that I need to get out of my parents' house and honors that. She needs specifics before she can help me. The problem is I still don't feel the specifics warrant anyone's help. I'm scared to tell people what life here is like because I don't want to hear it's like that everywhere. Or that it's my fault, my issue, and so it would be like that anywhere...
I guess the problem is that I've lost my sense of therapy as a process; I don't see each session as a continuation of the last one, leading into the next one. I don't see myself working with her for an extended period of time, in which my thought processes and circumstances evolve, and things slowly change for the better. I just feel like everything is separated again, the sessions are these little flashes of "chance" that I have, that I grab at or run from, and then they're over, and I'm at home grieving and beating myself for not doing better. Then I prepare myself for the next one, it doesn't happen then either, and things just repeat and upset me more and more, like that fucking awful "Groundhog Day" movie.
actually I think I liked it when I sat through it a second time.
Anyway...separation is a coping mechanism for me; it's a pretty drastic one. I'm always putting things together, most of my family does, drawing lines between this and that, finding cause and effect where there is none, referencing this to that (see "groundhog day"), etc. And so the times when I sever those lines usually signify something more intense than some minor upset. It confuses me though because I also draw those lines to cope, so I don't understand - is one for more difficult situations than the other? how can I use them simultaneously - the way I did with the abandonment issue? how does this *work?*
I don't understand why I feel so desperate, why I feel like I'm running out of time, and each chance I get now is a "last chance." The only explanation I can come up with is that I'm losing my ability to hold up against everything, and so I'm instinctively beginning to prepare for things to collapse. You know when you are moving a large collection of things, and you pick up a bunch of them and without really thinking too much about whether you can handle a few more, you just instinctively take what you have and come back for a second trip? That's how this feels. I do it, I stop, and I don't really understand why. Maybe I'm scared that I'm getting closer to that "truth" that Tracy acted on.
Except I *got* there Monday, and so I just don't understand what my approaching "something awful" IS.
My head is spinning (with fever and with thought) and it's time for food so...
adios
chord
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