9:05 p.m. - 04/22/02
this topic. no, this one. no, wait- I've got it now...
I've been getting the worst headaches lately. Urg. I can't shake this one, and I don't know why I have it, which always bothers me. They feel pretty much like migraines, but then, there isn't that devastating nausea that just sends me completely out of my mind. So who knows? One of the new meds I've been taken for the school anxiety/ agoraphobia stuff is supposed to help with migraines, so maybe that's the change. Or maybe I'm less stressed, or sleeping less (no comas)...
Last night I would have slept really well, but I had this dream where all of the muscles in my arms and legs contracted, so they were basically frozen in (forearm to upper arm and lower leg to thigh)...when I woke up my arms *ached* and I completely freaked out thinking about how randomly something could go wrong with my physical health. I haven't had a physical check-up since I left the hospital, and I just kept thinking about the woman who ran the schooling program at Rogers...she was long recovered, and while I was there she started to have major health problems. Girls who have stopped purging still have heart attacks. It's scary. I know I was lucky in the lack of damage apparent in my body (the bone density scan I had a few months before the hospital, for instance, was fine...and my electrolyte levels never fell, to my knowledge) but there's just this fear that surfaces sometimes. I'll never know if I'm really physically recovered, or if my body is just another time bomb, ticking. I know everyone deals with this. If I weren't so freaked to leave the house, I'd have to worry that a car would just "oops" through a stop light and it'd be over. But there's something unnerving about the idea that the lethal variable is inside you.
I mean, eating disorders are a lot about the control, and this is pretty much the ultimate lack of control.
Anyway, other than the headache and the dreams which obviously mean a lot more metaphorically than they do in terms of my physical health, things are ok. I didn't even call Dr. R tonight to check in with him. (He told me Wednesday that he wouldn't be hurt if I didn't, but he'd return my call if I did.) I was feeling ok, and even though I could have talked tonight, probably, I could have not talked just as easily, so I watched exaggerated David E. Kelley dramas and wondered why on earth no one understands that life is dramatic enough as is. I mean, a certain level of fantasy is fine with me (even likable) but you have this show set in a school. You would think, with all of the school-age kids in therapy, and all of the kids who would benefit from it, they could find enough drama to keep from doing soap opera story twists.
I'm just bitter because Once and Again was cancelled four episodes into my discovering it was the most marvelous show created. And don't hold my record for television (schlop) against me. This was brilliant in spite of my liking it. Unfortunately, it couldn't withstand the Chordchild Cancelling Curse. I have never liked a show that lasted (either in terms of being good or in terms of staying on the air) for more than 2 seasons of my watching it. Usually, it's less.
Unimportant television babbling aside, school is going well. My teacher (who really needs a cool codename so that I can stop calling her 'my teacher' - maybe I'll ask her what she wants it to be, so she can obsess over why I write about her in my journal and our relationship can come very secretive and awkward, mwa ha ha) has continued with the "take it easy" attitude. We're doing state standardized testing this week and I'm beginning to write my research paper. I'd already done a basic outline, but I couldn't think of a hook. I need to be careful about this because I want to be creative about how it's written and still have it appeal to snobby medical people. I want -eventually- to be someone literary types and psychiatric types are both unable to avoid, and I must practice.
I'm also working out my schedule for next year. I'm a little nervous because of what's been happening lately - I got so overwhelmed - and in order to graduate with my peers, I need to take a full load of classes next year. I should be proud that that's all I have to do (in fact, I *am* proud) because having taken 2 classes this year (it'll probably end up being 1 1/2 credits, but possibly only 1) the fact that I can still take a "normal" senior year (including all the blow-offs) and graduate without penalty or extra time is pretty incredible. It shows a lot for how hard I worked prior to, and during, my illness. Also, I *want* to take a full load of classes before going to college because I don't want to have the fear of not having done so for two years to further paralyze me on that track. But at the same time seeing all those lines fill up with classes I've been waiting my whole academic career to take thrills me (despite they're being the rural high school versions) I'm kind of overwhelmed by the whole thing. Dr. R says that he has no doubt I'll be ok in my pursuits, but I'm not so sure. He says it has nothing to do with me, it has to do with the circumstance, the environment, but I wonder. It's confusing - feeling completely unrepresented in the medical literature on my own diagnoses, participating in a fraction of the life my peers complete each day - and then being told that it's only because of the diagnoses (and the shit with my parents, etc) that I can't do these things. I mean, how do I trust that? How do I trust that it isn't something deeper, something in me?
I guess faith. And memory. Faith says 'que sera sera' in a child's voice and does cartwheels like Alanis Morisette at the end of Dogma. Meanwhile Memory, slightly older and more jaded, walks up, punches me lightly on the shoulder, curls her eyebrows and reminds, "Remember how much it sucked to think you were poisoned? Why don't you just give this whole 'it's not you' thought a shot? I mean, seriously, girl - could it possibly be worse?" Not likely.
So yeah. It's mostly life by process of elimination...
Tomorrow I have to write a paper on risks for the state to evaluate. And hopefully I will begin writing a paper on how to heal the social epidemic of eating disorders through the application of certain biological concepts, for my own purposes. And then Wednesday I can go up to Dr. R (who really needs a nickname, too) and ask him why it is that I don't feel represented by the medical documentation of the illness that is said to be making things so hard. I really just want to ask someone who would know - am I so atypical? Am I really so odd? Of course, there's always that fear that I'm just lying to myself and that I really am more like the "typical" eating-disorder-sufferer than I let myself believe...but then, I don't really believe in typical...so maybe I should just stop thinking for awhile.
I think I'm starting to understand why I have a headache.
I try to think about RED, and whether or not I felt out of place there, (beyond the fact that it was home and I loved it, did I feel 'different'...) and the truth is I can't remember. I'm not sure I want to remember.
There are so many things I think about that I do not want to know. Which means, oh yes, it's time to tango with the Sandman and hope he's feeling generous...
love to all
chord
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