8:55 p.m. - 01/26/02
conciseness is just censorship in disguise.
My mom is coveting the phone line, so I don't have time to write...not that I'm overly-inclined to anyway. I just spewed out a riveting 12K e-mail, which has basically sucked all of the strength out of me. Of course, I'll post it here for all my wide-eyed readers...I wonder what they'd think if they knew nearly ever word that passes between us is also shared blindly with anyone who cares to read it?
Not their issue, though; it is my journal...::sleeps::
_
[to dr. r]
I'll be honest and say that the majority of me does not want to write you right now. I don't like who I'm becoming- angry, sullen, spoiled - nor who I've been- confused, withdrawn, manipulative. I remember how much I used to like going to the appts with you because I felt like you understood on some level most people did not and I felt like you genuinely cared. Being around someone like that makes me want to be good, too; it makes me want to show the best parts of myself, or at the very least, to show the parts that are the less disgusting. It's easier to like a sad girl then an angry one; it's easier to like a victim than a delinquent, and I'll admit the past few years, convinced I could not quit being crazy, I decided to be the brand of crazy I thought most acceptable. Admitting that diminishes the act almost completely; no one could like a manipulator, even if she - I - did so trying to preserve myself. But what's left to preserve, someone who's resistent, stubborn, abrasive? Part of why I don't like going to see you now is because my head spins in the waiting room - yes. But there's another part- I cry in the waiting room because I'm sad and frightened and ashamed of my own hopelessness, but I cry because I'm angry, too. I'm angry and I don't want to be. I'm angry in a way that overwhelms me, that slips through any hole, any outlet, it can find. I find myself getting angry with you, and I don't like the way I treat people when I'm angry; I don't like thinking about what they must think of me, especially someone I've been so grateful for in the past. I'm malignant, remember? I'm *too bad.* I'm destructive, poison, and even saying this, I'm probably just trying to win some power even I don't understand, to manipulate everyone further.
I'm bad. Are you convinced of that yet? You promised me that when you spoke to my parents you would keep my own reality in mind, that you would not let their words overshadow what I had said, or change what you'd thought of me and my experience. But what about my experience? No one even listens to what I have to say anymore; no one knows what my experience *is.* I know I don't take every opportunity to talk, but sometimes, despite the fact that no one thinks I know what's best for me, sometimes I know things other people don't. I know how much of my parents I can take, and sometimes I know that what I say in front of them, or what I say that is then transferred to them, will make the situation worse. I don't want to deal with it, I don't talk in front of them, so all anyone hears is their story. Fine. That's fine. Except you told me that this was about me and changing my experience, about helping my parents *be my parents* for once. And I will say that things are changing; they are definitely changing. With each week, my mom is more mom less therapist, while my dad screams a bit more and broods a bit less. But I said from the beginning that I don't care about the family work. It doesn't matter to me. I don't care about fixing the family; I don't care if it gets fixed. What happened to my recovery being about me? What happened to people asking me how I felt? I'm so tired of being asked how I'm doing and knowing the translation is "honestly now, have you eaten today and are you having urges to hurt yourself?" Harriet's a good therapist; I'm not sure you two are on good terms, which makes me feel caught a lot - but she is a good therapist, and I know you know that. The fear I have of her is a productive fear; it's good for me to face her, and I know that. The anger I feel isn't productive. It's just brewing, boiling, waiting to go completely over the edge. I don't know what to do with this, ok? Everyone wanted so much for me to *feel* anger, to *be* angry, to say so flat-out, and I've done that - now what? You seem lately to be a big fan of waiting; the truth is I don't have time. I'm tired of waiting for things to get worse, for the next person to betray me, scream at me, tell me I'm worthless. I'm sick of waiting to realize that all good is fleeting. I'm sick of hating myself, of hating my life, of being lonely and too terrified to leave the house to change it. I'm sick of not having any friends, but knowing that if I panic in a tiny store, a party or a school is just a bit out of reach. I'm sick of being a hopeless cause that just gets pushed around, of being treated like a little kid who needs a bed time and a parent monitoring her and people always checking her weight and her blood making sure they match up with what she's saying. I'm sick of not being able to be trusted, of everyone trusting the people who didn't do a damn thing for me for years - not until they caught me with my finger down my throat. I don't care if you want to listen to them; that's fine, but I don't want to sit around and watch it happen. I don't want to sit there and watch you decide, just like everyone else, that they're perfect and I'm wrong. Because it hurts too much to know that I used to feel connected to you enough to *talk* with you, and now I'm just coming in week after week watching you treat me less and less like you did and more and more like they do. You used to listen to me the way someone who has struggled listens. You used to listen like you had some understanding of the pain I was in beyond a textbook, and it concerned you. You didn't feel like a doctor. Now, the way you look at me is different, the way you talk to me is different. You're not my ally anymore; you're the family's ally, so why should it matter what's best for me? It never has.
Do you know what it's like to be 16 yrs old and given a bedtime for the first time in your life? No second, my parents gave me one just before I went into the hospital. Do you know what it's like to be told you aren't capable of taking care of yourself when you've been the only person *interested* in taking care of you for years? For the record, I know chemical depression from circumstancial depression. I know when I'm upset and when my body feels physically depressed. I know when I'm just a little nervous about a new situation and when I'm shaking for ten minutes because the phone rang or because the sound of my own footsteps is too loud. I know everyone thinks that I don't feel listened to unless I get my way, but it really isn't that. It's just difficult enough to do all sorts of terrible frightening things without having someone pat me on the head and say they understand. No one understands. How could they? I'm just saying it's bad enough to be put through pain after pain and be told it's for your own good, to have your limits tested at the same time you're being patronized.
I used to feel human, or at least alive. Subhuman maybe, but at least visible. Now I just feel like a lab rat or a case study. Let's alter this variable and record patient progress. It isn't fair. To get your life back only to have your voice taken away. It isn't fair to spend four years fighting off depression and anxiety and a year battling an eating disorder - to *finally* be able to breathe through panic attacks, follow a meal plan, to not purge for five months- only to be told you can't take care of yourself. Now of course, everyone understands how I feel and what I think, perfectly. That's how they know it's wrong. That's how they know I'm wrong. I don't have a degree, I don't have forty years of life and twenty five as a parent, under my belt. But I know myself. I have some insight into myself, even into what I need. I know when I'm refusing something out of fear or anger and when I'm looking after myself. No one wants to let me be my own advocate and the director of my own decisions. No one wants to let me be human, but everyone wants me to believe I am. Simple.
I feel weak around you. I feel stupid. I know better than to trust power; I know that all authority hurts and that anyone who thinks they're a step above you also knows at just which angle to step on you. I know that. So I feel stupid and naive because I let the fact that you had all the right answers and looked at me like I was a lost person instead of a lost cause, overshadow my own experience. Is this the life I fought for all those nights in the hospital? Is this the life so much better than my numbness, the one everyone was so excited to show me? I've felt life, I know this isn't it. And if this is what I'm supposed to sit here, settling for, "waiting" in...it's crazy. It's cruel.
I feel like a caged animal that everyone observes, takes notes on, smiles at, that everyone makes sure is fed and getting enough sleep, but would never expect to approach them and be involved in its own care. Explain to me how I talk back to the supposed shame-voices in my head that say, "How can you think you are human?" when even the *outside* evidences suggest otherwise? What life is this? How many years am I expected to fight, to wait, to say yessir and no ma'am, and speak when spoken to? I'm telling you I don't have time. I don't have the stamina to go on through all of this until its all utopian. I get tired of people pushing me past my limits in order to determine or redefine them. I have limits. I have a place I get to before there's no more left. There is, after all, the possibility that my malignant self also suffers from its own toxins. Who's to say I won't end up destroying myself when I'm so good at destroying everything else?
Certainly I'm not the one. I don't feel I'm the one to say anything anymore. And on that note, I can barely look at this e-mail without gagging. I'm tired of reaching out, of having every pain be treated like a symptom either of illness or adolescence. I'm nearing a point now where there's no logic behind talking, where it makes the most sense to just shut up and deal with things my own way. Defiant- that's another word I never wanted to be. Another thing I'm becoming.
Or maybe I've always been this degree of awful, and I just got sidetracked trying so hard to hide it for so long. It's ok if you think I'm awful now. I don't even need the reason because I understand more of them than could ever be communicated. It's even ok if you think I'm writing this to hurt you. I probably am. I guess I've learned at least that the truth when it comes is more painful than anything else. So the best way to hurt someone is to be honest. Just like the best way to convince someone I'm awful is to quit trying to - to just sit back and talk and let them see it. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt when they find out. I guess that's the point of all of this is to say that it hurts...no matter how many times it happens, it still hurts. It still manages to make me hate myself just that little bit more to see the depth of my own repulsiveness.
If I got a letter like this I would hate the person who wrote it. I keep thinking that as I write. I'm stopping now.
Thanks for being so good all this time and for that night you talked to me on the phone. It meant something to me, that my calling would have mattered...
Mary
_
they'll probably decide I'm a threat to myself and put me in the hospital; this is the type of thinking usually equated with suicide. if only they knew how pathetic any littlekid attempt I made to hurt myself would stand in the face of my gross overexistence.
meaning - not even I have the power to take my poison down.
I told him the meds weren't working and I needed help; he said my life is devastating and the meds won't do anything.
joy.
chord
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