5:20 p.m. - 08/07/02
do you have [[any idea]] what they've :put: you through=
the summer right now seems really long. I think because the New York trip is so stretched out in my mind, and the time before New York seems oddly long ago. I feel like it's time to start school, and it's annoying me that I still have a few weeks. which is silly because who exactly *wants* to dive into 7 or 8 classes that are only sort of interesting? but I think that happens a lot after registration. and besides the obvious, I want to show myself I can do this. a full load of classes. a normal school day (at home, but still...) I want to show myself I'm 1.5 credits short of senior status because I was sick for a year and a half (or five, depending on how you look at it) not because I'm stupid and incapable. Yes. I don't think it will be too horrible. Homebound is easily suspended, altered, and so forth when things get rough, what I think will be the challenging classes (physics, psych) interest me, and the non-challenging classes will not take up much time other than in reading. Which is cool. I'm wondering if I'll need the Concerta to focus or if I'll be able to do it without chemical aid. That's why I feel the summer should be over - because I'm ready to stop wondering.
I don't want the summer to end for Sara, though. I want to be able to keep her safe from the school demons. But then, maybe her demons are more plentiful. Her summer hasn't been easy after all...
I need to call her. My parents are out for the night, maybe I'll do it this evening. I'm scared because I don't know what will happen inside me if I hear she's in the hospital. I need to have a plan. Call whoever I can call? I think that's good. Call Dr. R if I can and call my dad's cell if I need people in the house with me right. then. Maybe she's home and she's fine, and she won't want to talk but at least I'll know she's at home. Maybe she's had a wonderful few weeks. Again, the agony of not-knowing. I'm groggy from a nap, but if I can wake up a little, and if I really want to talk, I'll call. If I don't want to talk, maybe I can call and be like, "Hey, I'm not really up to talking right now, but I just wanted to check in with you real fast; let you know I survived New York and see how you are doing." The cool thing is Sara is completely cool with stuff like that. With, "I'm just calling to say that I want to talk with you tomorrow." Such craziness makes sense to her.
Sort-of-related sidenote: my sister's inability to understand how much I love therapy makes me crazy. I joke about therapy, I talk about therapy, I look at life through the eyes of someone who has had a sufficient amount of therapy, and she doesn't like any of it. She doesn't want to hear about therapy when I joke about it, and she gets sick of hearing about "shaming words" and "projection." Which makes sense to me because she's never been in therapy, but at the same time, I think the way I look at life is healthy, and I enjoy my therapy jokes. I don't have the same amount of relationships as most people, so I talk about my relationship with therapy and with Dr. R and so forth more often than most to compensate. Because I see parallels between my life and other people's but they usually involve recovery and recovery has majorally involved therapy for me. It's irritating to not have her accept that part of me. It's hurtful. It's like having an interest or a relationship she doesn't understand. Like she strongly dislikes one of my closest friends. She's judging *me* along with the friend, and I don't like that.
Plus, I think she could get a lot of good things out of therapy (cos, you know, everyone could) and it irritates me that someone who would end up so benefited by it, doesn't like to hear it mentioned. How can people know they have issues and still not want to acknowledge them, work on them, move on? I need to understand this, but I don't.
Time with the doctor-man was good today. I'm actually intrigued by how much we managed to cover (if barely) and the way that, consciously or unconsciously, he got so much in. There were a few things that I didn't have time to mention, like the feelings that came up at the airport coming home or the fact that Cami (eee!) and Julie (eee!) are visiting this weekend...but still, we touched on most of the important things- what happened in NY with my parents, with my sister, with myself, and my play and what I'm thinking about school right now. The interesting thing was that instead of really talking about events we talked about concepts, and there was less to cover that way, or maybe the things that I needed to cover came together more easily. I mean it this way: if we tried to talk about the first day through the last day of the trip and the days since I've been home we would have never gotten through it all. And if he'd picked days, I would have ended up feeling like not everything I needed to say had found its way into his ears. Instead, he brought up some of what I'd been struggling with before I left (mainly the pain around RED, not having home, not feeling safe and supported) and we started talking about how that had continued to come up in the three weeks I was away from therapy. Then we started talking about the play and realized that my mom's reaction had been another one of those lovely "let me tell you your experience" moments, and so we started talking about those. We were naming feelings and thoughts and issues and I had the chance to think up other times that I'd felt them during the time away, which was nice because it covered a lot of topics, and even though I didn't get to *say* "Neverland made Scott think he's a sinner" I did get to say that it's a horrible, horrible place. I did get to say that my body wrenches up and screams thinking about it. So forth.
For the most part, it was a lot of review for me, though I'll probably have some insight into what he said before next Wednesday. (Sometime he affects me after a delay.) I think mostly this was just about updating him and giving myself the chance to talk openly which was as necessary as any more progressive therapy would have been. I needed the chance to just talk again, and to get back into the routine. I was really wanting to see him again sooner, but I think it's better if I wait a week because it will show me that we really are back on the week-to-week basis, and that'll help me feel better about the time we do have. I don't know if that makes sense outside my head, but my head seems happy with the logic, so ok...
It was nice to talk about the school stuff with him, even though it was only the last five minutes or so and we didn't go into it deeply. He was holding the homebound form we have to submit yet again, and he was asking me what I thought about the coming school year, whether I knew what I thought, what I felt about my mom's comments on registration. (She had talked with him about it right before the session while I was in the bathroom. I figured if I went to the bathroom, he would finally come out to get me, and he did.) I told him that I had pretty much done my best to not listen to what my mom had to say, and I wasn't sure what I thought about her comments. Finally, I told him that this thing she keeps reiterating to people, this - "it was just a big deal to get her through the door" really bugs me. I want to ask her why it's such a big deal. It's a door. You go through doors. I said that. It doesn't make sense to me that I wouldn't go through that door.
So then I told him about the realization I'd had about my social life not being such a scary thing anymore. That I don't feel so agoraphobic all the time, that I'm not so terrified of relationships. I told him that when I walked into the school building and saw people my age, people who looked intriguing, people who looked like my friends, my first response was, "Ok! I'll go back to school!" and that's not a socially scared response. I *wanted* to know the girl across the hall. I wanted to be able to run over and talk to people. I wanted people to know my name. Anonymity is swell sometimes, and it's one of my favorite parts of living in the middle of nowhere after a small town (occasionally, it isn't so fun to be in a place where everybody knows your name) but frindship is also nice. I told him that I definitely think about college, and I know it will be a hard transition, but I honestly believe that the first weeks of college will help me adjust to college. I don't feel like I need school to do that. I told him I'm not scared to have classmates, I'm scared to be *in school* and I didn't really know that before. Maybe it was different before, I don't know. I told him that people (very significant people - Brea was one) have said to me, "you're scared of school because you haven't been *in* school in a year-and-a-half." I've been told and often convinced that my fear is one I need to jump into because once I feel through the fear I'll be ok, and I'll have friends, and I'll be normal again. That would be a socialization phobia. That is not the case.
I told him I'm not scared of school because I haven't been there in a year; I'm scared of school because a year-and-a-half ago the school I *went to* was a horrible, horrible place. Because teachers screamed at me until I had panic attacks, the administration bred crazy perfectionism and competition, so on and so forth. I think my antennae were a little more aware of all of this, even though it was not on an intelligent level. I felt the full brunt of what was so subtly happening to us. The abuse was subtle, hard to see, and because my emotions were so high and my logic so low, I was able to more accurately gauge what was going on. That also meant I was *feeling* like an abuse victim. Which was not cool.
What was cool was that he agreed with me. When I told him that I don't know what it's going to take to get through what happened to me in N*land, but I'm fairly certain after Monday that it will *not* take going to school. That it is not about pushing my fear, but exploring it in safe ways. My pain isn't around socialization; it's what keeps me from socializing. I want to socialize, and I don't usually want to do things I'm scared of (other than moving out and running away and those sorts of things.) My first instinct is to throw caution to the wind and find a friend. But intelligently, that isn't a good idea. I can't take it to fast because I haven't dealt with the school stuff yet. And that's ok.
He said it was. He said that he agreed with me, and he affirmed what an incredible realization all that must have been. (He's cool that way.) And then he wrote the homebound form for forty weeks (roughly one school year) and pointed out that we could always alter it as need be. Hearing him say forty weeks completely relieved me of all fear for a few seconds. I don't really realize how scared I am of school because I always feel like I shouldn't be, like it's just a fear to face, and not the memory of all that pain. I'm realizing that once again my disorders were necessary. The social anxiety, the agoraphobia, they were all there to keep me safe. If I had gone back to school last year, I would not have been safe. It's like going into the house or mirror world of what was an abusive home. And like an abuse victim, I would still give anything to be able to go visit Neverland. I still really love parts of it and still really miss parts of it, and I need with everything in me to stay away for now. Which is so so difficult.
Maybe, with my dad talking about moving to a place we'll call Narnia, and my mom planning to stay here in Oz, I can call that my reason for having moved here. I needed the distance in order to see how terribly hurt I'd been. And I needed the distance in order to heal that...
And now I must figure out how to explain to the world's most brilliant boy that no voice, not even the so-called word-of-God, has the right to tell him how to feel, or that he's bad for feeling. I have to tell a person whose descent I wasn't there to witness that those really cool Christians are brainwashing him. There's nothing wrong with being Christian, (there are many beautiful things, actually) - but I firmly believe that anyone who treads on your ability to feel is abusive. And dangerous. Scott is twelve times taller and stronger than me, and I still want to fly in grab him and whisk him out of N*land. He'll be in college this fall. Maybe he'll make it out alive...
Maybe we'll all...?
chord
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