9:45 p.m. - 09/10/02
:\\excuse me, but can -I be you- for awhile::\]
I feel like I'm back in middle school, minus the positive surroundings. I think somewhere along the most recent line, I developed the misconception that if I want to be well, I will be well. I thought that if I wanted to be out of my trauma, I would be out of it. Maybe it's because mostly what I wanted in my illness was to be able to feel and still be safe, and I've managed that. Now even the most painful things seem manageable, and more importantly, seem worth the pain. But now, I'm part-preadolescent, part-unimpressed-observer, and all this depression is not amusing. Depression. Yes. Fuck it, and the way it comes right round baby right round like a record baby... and so forth.
I don't know where I am. I can't keep track of what day it is, what hour even. I can't keep track of anything, really. I think I have so much work to do. I look at it and have precious little; by the time I'm done looking at it, I think I have so much. It's this cycle I'm in, something that's been imprinted on my brain, and I can't tell if the shame is stemming from the schoolwork or contributing to my obsessiveness with it. Maybe both. I know that today I started to be crazy anxious and when I thought, "Propranolol/ Alprazolam?" my head replied, "No. You'll calm down. And if you calm down, you'll lose your energy, and you won't get as much work done." So that says something. Dr. R and The Instrument were right: fear is my drive. Fear keeps me moving, keeps me active, keeps me meeting the expectations I'm supposed to meet.
It doesn't keep me happy. I don't turn in a single worksheet feeling like I did well, feeling like I know what I'm doing. I don't learn. I cram information into my head, like a girl who's starving, try to play the part of one with good nutrition long enough to pass the test, then back into my cycle. School is the ED, with or without the food. And shame. Dear God, the shame. I don't know where it comes from, or what its full purpose is, but I know that my head is saying things to me I would forcibly protect other people from hearing. I know that I feel desperate in my inadequacy, that I start to think about how impossible it is that I will finish all this work, and then I start to think, maybe, maybe just a little bloodletting will help. Of course. I don't know. Restriction hasn't really come into the picture these past few days, not the way it used to come. I haven't consciously thought about restricting, but cutting's always on my mind. I think just *considering* it keeps me spinning through the cycle. Considering it, the adrenaline rush of breaking the rules, the fear of consequences I know all too well, throws me forward just long enough to keep me from doing it. For awhile. History dictates eventually this will fall through, and I will need the actual act. Which will result in anticlimax and leave me unable to continue. I want to ask the doc tomorrow what will happen if I cut. Will he have to tell my parents? If there's anything worse than feeling how I do right now, it's having my parents know. Which obviously, they already do.
They know about Ashley, and they know I'm completely messed up. They know I'm treating them like I did in middle school, like I did my first few years of high school. That I'm sullen and defensive; I'm withdrawn. I keep my head buried in a book, a project, a thought they cannot see. I throw off their invitations with quick "I have to study"s; maybe I'm hoping they'll tell me I can't study anymore...but then I'll snap if they do. I'm already so behind, doing so poorly; I'm already absolutely going to fail these tests. And I can't deal with it; I want to run away. I want to drop out. I don't care what they say; college isn't worth this. I'm not sure I can get through what N*land did to me, and maybe I'd rather just get a mediocre service job and not feel this pain. Maybe I'd rather not nearly die trying to live again. So hard, so hard, so hard.
The only way I could give up that other disorder was to be at RED. Do they honestly think I can learn to do school in a way that is healthy, the way I learned to eat? Do they honestly think I'll survive all of this? The pain of life, the pain of addiction, the pain of recovering from things even the DSM-IV doesn't recognize? I've gone so far into madness; even those with telescopes are blind.
I'm scared. I'm scared that I'll start failing again, and the teachers will start spouting the horrible, acidic phrases so common not so long ago. I'm scared that I'll fail and the schools will look at me with absolute disgust, and I will bow my head in shame. Would it be so bad? Would it be *so bad* to just say "you know what? fuck you and your system; I've had enough of it"...to find people and ideas and questions outside of classrooms. I have experience; it's not impossible that I could get a job helping people without having some crazy-ass degree. Maybe I don't want to send that form to Hampshire this November. Maybe I don't want to make my "binding-if-accepted" Early Decision contract. Maybe I want more choices that "which universities are you applying to" something along the line of, "what are you doing and in what version of your time?"
This isn't a renouncement of secondary schooling. I want to learn throughout my life, but I go back and forth in my certainty about wanting to go to college, especially next fall. I didn't realize the depth of this issue, the extent to which they've shaped my mind to their liking, and I am *not* signing up for four more years of that. (No matter where I go, I take them with me. The school itself is not enough to make or break their presence in my head.)
Maybe that's what I need to say to him. Not, "will you nark if I have to make some airholes in my arms?" Not that. Maybe all I need to say is, "Give me time." The girl who gave up magnitude in favor of simultaneity needs suspension long enough to breathe.
I forget how in sync Sara and I are. It's not enough to tell her what I would do as her. I have to hear it also. I have to put it into play. Somewhere in the yarn-ball-universe we overlap; my advice to her becomes a compass of my own.
*
Talked to Shandi for the second day in a row. I can't believe how adult she sounds, and how much I love her when her voice is in the room. Apparently, the autopsy was terribly inconclusive. There's an investigation now to rule out foul play. No one can believe it's possible but then, when the world is made of painful happenings, you don't doubt they'll be more painful round the bend. It isn't connected in my head. The details of her death and the girl I have watched live. It's still two different drawings sprawled across one page.
I miss feeling safe for more than one hour a week.
chord
�
�
