6:53 p.m. - 04/03/03
everything will be wonderful someday.
So, ok...
I only had one remotely amusing thought yesterday, and it wasn't enough to pull me out of the absolute hell I was enduring. Wow. The 48 hours that started with Tuesday's session (I'm so not used to this "Tuesday session" thing - sessions are on Wednesday, damnit!) was, to the best I can articulate it, the worst of my life. I have a theory now that there is a peak worst that life can reach and mine has a few times (the summer before Rogers, the first weeks after Rogers, the first two months after Tracy died) but it still can do so. So to say that these were supremely hellish hours is not to say they were somehow more hellish than any of the aforementioned periods. Just...really, really bad.
I felt like I was dying, or maybe that I wanted to die. I felt like I'd throw up, or maybe -again- I only wanted to... I felt like the world was burning me alive, and I spent most of the time with my eyes closed, and a blanket over myself (head and all) in the dark. If I'm not awake, I can't hurt myself. What an awful logic to live by (but I *lived* by it nonetheless.) And on top of the pain itself, it was all too familiar. I imagine most people remember their eating disorders (whether they like to or not) as a time of cold. Mine was blazing, burning heat. The heat of out-of-season layered clothing, dehydration, fear, and shame. Mine was like yesterday, with sweaters instead of tank-tops, with nothing instead of juice, snacks instead of meals, and hiding instead of homework. My life, at its worst times, was like the past few days, and what the hell happened to make it that way, huh? At least in all those other times there were clear-cut reasons: I was in *hell*, I had left *home*, I had lost *Trace*... Now? I had one bad session, which we even talked about being a bad session before I left, and I still was struggling to eat, to not cut, to not die? How the hell do two years disappear in less than as many days?
I kept telling myself it was impossible. Impossible for progress to un-happen. Impossible for me to not have experienced eighteen months of hard-fought recovery. Myself didn't seem to hear. The burning continued, the fear of death and the wish for it continued, the desperate crying, and the malicious disgust over tears. I was crashing into the same rocks over and over again, an ocean seasick on myself. I'm writing this because I'd forgotten. I used to live this way everyday. I used to live this way everyday. I used to feel like I was dying, everyday.
My God. I don't know how I would have survived if - upon me completely freaking out when my parents informed me of an appointment scheduled for Saturday - they hadn't promptly shifted their schedules back to the Thursday (again, not Wednesday- what is up with this?) appointment we discussed. I had no idea how I was getting through any minute of these past two days, and the idea of having to survive until Saturday scared me so bad I was shaking. I spaced out by way of computer pinball and the Internet. My mom said, "Mary, are you on-line? Because you need to start tapering that down. People are saying that no matter what time they call, they can't get through. And all these piles of things you have around- you need to clean at least *some* of them up." I just stared at her and finally I said, "Because that'll help." "Help what?" says Mother. "Oh, for Christ's sake, you know I'm having a really hard time right now, and you want me to stop the only thing that is helping and clean?" "...I know you're struggling." Right. And she thought she knew why, too. Well, I didn't let her get very far into that one. And later, when I finally gave in and paiged the doctor, she stayed on the phone for an hour (with three different people) so that no one could get through... Nice hypocritical matriarch. At least, she's consistent. Oh, wait. She's not...
So, I waited, and the fact that I was waiting helped me stay off-line (though my first thought when I considered signing off was- "oh, it's fine; I can call someone" - uh, yeah- same problem) and find my mindless diversions elsewhere. I attacked some paper with oil pastels; I watched a little tv. In the later-evening, Shannon called, which was so perfect. She said she'd had a feeling all day that I wasn't ok, and I hated to have to confirm it, but she sounded like it made her feel better just to know. She asked if she could do anything, and I told her she really couldn't, that the doctor was supposed to call. So then she said she loved me (do you know how much I love that?) and said that she'd hang up so he could reach me. I didn't want to let her, but I knew I needed to... Gosh, she's great...
(And my parents are like, "Who called you?" "Who is this person?" And I'm like, ha, ha, ha, you'll never know! Nor do they need to. I've decided that talking about people - in a good way - to my psychiatrist is the equivalent of letting them meet my parents. It's the sharing of an important relationship that's supposed to happen when you introduce people, which doesn't happen because I don't introduce people because my parents are crazy.)
Quick as if a switch were flipped, things turned around. It was eerie, but all of a sudden, I was steady, not giddy, but calm and certain about what I needed. I made myself a real dinner, and I ate that real dinner, and by 9:30, I felt exhausted enough to sleep, and ok enough to miss the call, and I told my parents to just say I'd see the doc the next day if he did call. I'm still not sure if he did. Busy little bee, that one.
So, I slept, after giving a few minutes of rational thought to the topic of What Happened. I slept, and I woke up Not Ok. (Again.) And I was like, damnit, what happened now? But I wasn't ok, I wasn't ok, I wasn't ok, and I couldn't help it. I did a little schoolwork (for the first time in days), and just before one my dad and I drove to the doc. I sat in his waiting room filling in Cold War worksheets and feeling like a freak for how often I was there, feeling scared of how much I needed to be...He took me into the office and said, "It sounds like you had a hard night yesterday" and I told him that the last 48 hours had been just-left-RED awful, and I didn't know why. He asked if I had any idea, any clue, if it were related to the session on Tuesday, and I told him that I really didn't know, but that since I'd really been okay Monday (at least I thought I had) and things started to plummet after the session, I guess something in there had triggered it.
He told me that he could guess a few reasons, but he probably didn't know them all. I told him that I felt lost and needed help getting out- basically, "Go ahead and guess." He guessed that the letter from Hampshire, the stress of my parents, the stress of sickness around me, and the stress of the appointment were all not good. The fact that he was factoring in Hampshire's decision worried me; I thought maybe we were about to relive the Tuesday session in all its evilness, so I said, "But I was really, really ok with the whole Hampshire thing. I mean, I was upset. But just normally upset. I was down. And that's so...novel...to me, it's so new- still- that it was ok." And he said, "Are you saying that you were managing just fine, and I came along and knocked you off course?" And I was like, Ah! Can't Blame You! You Good. He said, "Like you generally walk on the sidewalk, and this time you were walking on a fence, but you were balancing, and I came along and said, 'Why aren't you on the sidewalk?!' and got you there the quickest way- by pushing you off?" And I was like, "meep." I knew he was starting to understand it. I told him that when the whole Hampshire thing happened, I didn't feel so bad, but now I feel awful about it, and that made me question whether I'd ever been ok, or if I was just kidding myself. He said he thought I'd probably really been ok, probably really been managing it. He said that, thinking back to Tuesday, I had said I was doing pretty well, and he hadn't paid much attention to that. He explained his behavior in a rather splendid way (given the breadth of the injury); he said that he'd been so upset to hear that these people at Hampshire had missed the boat on this one, that they hadn't been able to "see what I see in you"- that he'd assumed I felt the same way. He'd assumed that I was upset the way that he was, projected it or whatever. And I, inside, was like, "He just implied he likes me!" It would have been a very different session if he'd just been upset with them and not assumed I was. We could have damned them together and moved on. Much more in the spirit of where I was that day.
"So, as my mom would say, how do we fix this?"
(The agonizing reply) "The letter?"'
"No, not the letter!!! This. What's happening inside me."
"Oh, oh, oh. You were saying, "so as my mom would say, how do we fix this" and I thought you meant that I'd responded as she would, jumping to this is a problem we have to fix, but you're saying, there's a part of me that wants to know, like my mom would, how we fix this."
And I was like, "Hallelujah, we are back on the same page." I think we were in different volumes for awhile there...But his magic was definitely back today. Fucking April Fools...Anyway:
I agreed with his revised interpretation, and he said..."Well, we've had mismatches" (miscommunication) "before. The one that I think of that's really pronounced was a few months ago, when we reached the 6 to 8 week point and weren't sure if we'd continue to work together or if you'd go see [The Therapist Who Makes Lawn Gnomes Dance.] How did we fix that?"
And I was like, "I don't know! I don't know how to fix this! HELP!" (all mutely of course...I barely sputtered out the, "I don't know.") He said that I was probably having a hard time articulating what we did because we just worked through it, we just kept meeting, kept talking, until we had come to an understanding. (Until I came to my senses and realized that even if he was a boy, and a boy seeing my *parents* no less, he was still the best therapist this side of Wisconsin.) I told him that was fine. I still believe that sessions like Tuesday's are the exception, are not the rule. I'm ok talking with him, and working through it, and gradually being better off for what happened happening, but hello! How do I survive in the meantime? I eventually told him how I was living (in the dark, with blankets over my head), how it was taking all of my energy to not cut, to not restrict, to not purge, to not die. I eventually explained to him that I felt like I'd experienced a negative-two-year tesseract and didn't know how much longer I could hold on. "It's going to break me," I said.
"And even if you could survive it," he said, "is that a kind of life you'd want to live?" Tears, tears, tears...(Mine, as usual.) The "of course I want to live, I just can't live like this, but I can't change this, and if I can't change this, I'll die, or I'll have to die, and what happened to Tracy will happen to me, and I don't want that, and oh, God, I don't want to hurt anyone like that; oh, my god I want to live, but-" variety.
He suggested that I was being torn in two, which felt like an acceptably torturous metaphor. He said that I am, undeniably, a relational person, and that what makes me so (umm...so...umm) rare is that I have equally strong pulls toward attachment and toward safety. Attachment from my mom, safety from my dad, he said, but manifested in a way that is all-me. (Thanks for the disclaimer, doc.) He said that it would be understandable if part of me had been facing how hard and painful it would be to come back after Tuesday but wanting it so badly (better than leaving, right?) while the other half wanted to turn tail and run. And I didn't know if that was quite right, because in the state I've been in, there's little conscious understanding, but I told him that it made a little sense. I said the strongest connection I had was to right after Rogers (he said we'd triggered trauma) when (again) in an uncharacteristic, downright bizarre manner, I had ended up not-understood and eventually alone.
I think we were both ready to hop in the time-machine and make the treacherous day un-happen by that point. Time machine's in the shop, though, so we talked instead.
We vaguely outlined the feelings; I cried about not wanting to lose this fight and being so scared I will. (It's a horrible thing to know that will is not enough. That a girl who wanted it more than anything didn't find it here...) He said he had a non-medical prescription for me, and since those are the ones I like the best, I allowed him to scribble on his r/x pad for awhile, while I tried to regain composure with the help of some Kleenex. (Yet another reason it's good I don't wear make-up. I end up looking like a bad eighties movie all the time.) When he'd finished, he came and sat on the Ottoman (hee hee, fancy-shmancy) which was good because it's closer, and I wish he always sat there. He said to me (in prefacing) - "By past experience we know..." and then translated his handwriting for me. "You do have the skills and the tools to get through this. Your job is to be my investigator and figure out as much as you can about these feelings and where they come from. Bring them in and we'll talk about them." He said, "we meet Tuesday, so we'll talk about them Tuesday, but that seems kind of a long way away for right now, so why don't we set up a time for me to check-in with you on Saturday, over the phone?" and I was like, "oh! your psychic vision's all cleared up again!" I told him that sounded like a good idea, smiled shyly at admitting it, and asked if we could cancel school as part of the deal. He said he'd given me enough homework and added my item to the list. I still need to call Mistrandy, but I'm looking forward to some all-out, introspective veg time. He shook my hand really gently but strong also, and I shook it back, and I was like, "God, you're *still* the best doctor ever" (Wisconsin discounted, for reasons of the mass confusion my split loyalties compel.)
He wrote the phone appointment down (a very, very good thing for busy doctors with over-booked schedules) and I found myself in the hallway, in the car, with some ice cream. I didn't stop eating when I was full (the Dairy Queen we went to seriously needs to invent a "snowstorm" because my small blizzard was still to big for my hungry tummy; ed entirely aside) so I felt a little sick after, but things were still a million bizillion times better than before. And this is why, when things are bad, your therapist should always have your back. Because someone (for instance, a person whose name rhymes with carry-it) who answers their emergency paiger with, "What?" is not the best ally.
I'm entirely spoiled by him. And thank God*, considering.
chord
*or whomever
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