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8:09 p.m. - 04/15/03
let me fall.
Wow. Cancel all plans for tonight. I really didn't want to make this official, but I officially have the migraine which makes every other bout of migraine seem like a hangnail. dear God. before lunch today, I developed this horrible headache (the kind where you feel like your brain is cramping or you've been furrowing your brow for the past three weeks, plus some sharp flashes of pain? yeah), and I suppose around dinnertime the headache got lonely because it invited some queasiness over (without even bothering to ask for my approval), and here I sit now, so entirely ill that the sound of keys and hum of a ceiling fan might as well be a marching band or a bunch of clog dancers. (I'm almost done...but) Also, my entire mouth tastes like aspartame or that glue they put on envelopes. Really. And I just left a voice mail for the doctor- because I completely forgot to tell him today, and if all goes well, I won't see him again until Saturday, and I didn't want to forget yet again that I've spent too much of the past week curled up under blankets with my eyes closed. I mean, I have enough things to hide under blankets about without physical issues added to the list. Ok? I swear...I didn't even get these until after Rogers. Lovely parting gift. Igg. Ok, I'm going to try and make this entry slightly less pointless so that I'm not inviting in the keyboard-clog-dancers for *no* purpose whatsoever.

You know what sounds purposeful right about now? Recapping television. And not just any television. WB television. Oh, yes. (Please excuse me on account of huge relevence in what I just viewed, or on account of I'm sick, or on account of it's not entirely your standard WB show.) So. Tonight in my agony, I watched The Gilmore Girls...and you remember how grateful I was when they re-aired the episode where Paris didn't get into Harvard after I didn't get into Hampshire? Said storyline continued along with a similar one regarding Rory's college decisisons. As for Lorelai, she was hugely busy because there was a fire at the inn, which she owns. Ok. So...Rory goes to see Paris, who is in bed, not taking calls, not telling her parents that she was rejected, et cetera. And Paris says that she has nothing now, no alternatives, and Rory is like, "Except Yale and Cambridge and Sarah Lawrence and..." because obviously the girl got into schools; she's a walking college application. And I'm not even thinking, "But what about me? I didn't apply anywhere else." Which I know many people predicted was a not-so-smart move. But I still think they're wrong. It's easier that way. I didn't know anything as certainly as I knew Hampshire, and so Hampshire was all I went with; unfortunately they didn't feel so certain about me. (Though I will toss a thanks out to Lindsey for responding to this news with, "Are they fucking retarded?") Anyway, Rory convinced Paris to consider life after the rejection letter, and continued to peruse her own options which included (acceptance letters from) Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. (Can we pause here for a "Jeez Louise" moment?) She made lists (yeay, lists) and Yale kept coming out on top (which it has to, so they can have a season next year; the show is based in Connecticut), which she couldn't handle because Harvard is plastered all over her walls and all over her childhood, and she's been planning this her whole life. Meanwhile, Lorelai is making fierce plans about how to take care of all the guests from the inn, and when they open up the place again, she stands on the porch and starts rattling off assignments, but the fire chief stops her and says, "Have you seen the inside? You might want to wait to make plans until you see the inside. And then...go slow."

The inside of the inn is wrecked. I mean everything is fire-damaged or water-damaged or stage-crew damaged; it's a total mess. And the camera goes back to Rory, who walks into her bedroom to discover her wall redecorated in Yale accoutrements, and she looks at it all with this surprise and then smiles, and we know, ok, she's going to Yale. That's where this installment of Gilmore Girls (and my [belovedly]-pathetic recap of it) ends...but this journal entry is just beginning, baby.

So, I feel great relation to this episode. Not the way I feel relation to a certain episode of a certain show which I won't mention because other than the few scenes I respond to (viscerally, entirely beyond my own ability to control it) I can't even watch the show. I guess this is more mental relation. But I think it's good advice...to not make plans until you've seen the inside. To be flexible when life hands you a different path, or you find yourself different than you were a year or ten years ago. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, but I do know I'm not happy doing nothing. I do know that in junior high, I fell in love with theater that helps people (or as Sarah put it on my resume "theater for social change); that in high school, I caretook like a mad codependent - but with genuine desire to relate and support; that at Rogers, I felt purposeful in a role that allowed me to grow, to help others, and to not cross my own boundaries; that since Rogers, I've missed that relation *so much*; that I started nourish and caged, and have found both to be hugely rewarding (if at times difficult or painful); that I don't want a normal "service" road but I do want to give an arm or an ear where they're needed. I know so much about myself, and part of what I know came at the cost of not finishing high school on the path that I intended. (And honestly, as much as I hate this rejection-thing, thank God* for the fact that I didn't stay on that path. Hmm...N*land's version of me versus Rogers' version of me. Tough choice. If I were insane.) I lost the timing, I lost the schedule, I lost the structure of, "this is where you go in the fall." It feels like summer here (it's been nearly 90 degrees for days), and I keep thinking that it's summer, and that summer is going to end and bring school, and then I realize it's not. Not this year, not definitively. It'd be a hard thing to swing a fall enrollment at this point, actually. I guess I have to go still further inside myself, grow still stronger, love in still more fulfilling ways. I have this illness that kept me from going on the path my teachers planned (sometimes for my benefit, sometimes to my detriment- the same path nonetheless) and this recovery that's teaching me a great deal more. I'm going to say that because of the latter, I need a little more time. This is my time to figure out what's next. I don't think I'm being overly precautionary. I know myself well enough to say that I'd rather regret what I did than what I didn't do; I'm willing to make mistakes. But I want to make them as mistakes, not as impulsive, premature decisions. I realized today for the first time that I could work with people struggling with mental illness, addiction, stress, et cetera without being in independent practice. I could work in a community, on a team like the one that treated me at Rogers. I've honestly never thought of that before, even though I daydreamed about working at Rogers so often. I never thought about that difference, but I'm still new to accepting and respecting how relational I am. Still new to understanding it and realizing it's a good thing. But happy, joyous that it is or that I am- however I might say it. Caged is teaching me quite a bit about that line (or as Dr. R called it "the moving target") between hugely relational and codependent. Even the process of learning has been ok, though, at least until now. And maybe I wouldn't have said that a few days ago (I had a really bad day a few days ago; the entry was private because I didn't need to ask anything of my loved ones here- and I couldn't share it with everyone), but I'll say it now. Right now things are good. (Dr. R is trying to teach me that I can express a feeling without any long-term commitment. I can feel this way now and differently in two minutes, and neither feeling is less valid because of that. Do we believe this? What's the usual answer? Yes, that's right: We want to.)

Oh, one more point about the Gilmore Girls thing. Lorelai said at one point that she wasn't exhausted; she was strangely exhilerated by the way she'd handled everything so well. And I was like, "that's me! That's how I felt!" before the infamous April Fool's day appointment. (I am so never scheduling anything important on April 1st again.) And it is, and I need to remember that. I handled it really well. I handle many things really well. I think I rise to the occasion (more and more) in a very personal way. I don't avoid my feelings, but I'm not overwhelmed by them. I don't go stone-cold, but I'm not a wreck, and it's working damnit. (I guess it helps that it's born of my actual nature, rather than social mores.) As for the April Fool's thing, the backlash is lessening. I was really talkative today: there was a lot I needed (or really wanted) to tell him, and then all this shit kept slipping in about my parents, so I had to talk more speedily about some of the other things, and I was so focused on what I needed to say, that I couldn't sit there judging how well he was understanding me. Which was very well, of course, but not perfectly. And I think I was right to say that my needing it to be a one-time-now-he's-perfect-again scenario hurt the situation further. Things felt on track today, even if we had to rush a bit at the end. ("Oh, and, would it be completely insane of me to call Rogers? Because I'm thinking of doing that today." He said no, it wasn't insane. He said to pay attention to whether or not I felt I could handle it if the conversation didn't go the way I wanted to, and make a decision from there. I chose to call. After choosing to mail the letter to Jenna. The second issue now belongs to the US Postal Service, the first...will be continued tomorrow morning between the hours of eight and three, when I try again...as no one answered. But I promised myself I'd call every day this week, until I talked to Steph, and if I don't manage that by Sunday, I'll reassess the situation. Yeay!)

I told him about C.A.G.E.D. He made a few really good points about the pro-ed sites, comparing them to gangs. He was entirely with me on the need-going-unmet front, though, which was cool. And his gang metaphor made sense to me. He also seemed to think the sites *need* to be taken down, that it isn't "either we help these people or we censor them" ... We take the sites down, and then we show them other alternatives; we do both. That has me rethinking some things- because I do get pulled in by the "it's censorship!" issue...even though I think that's a smokescreen over the real issues- and I'm not sure how I feel yet. I've kind of not thought about the group of people who develop eating disorders because of these websites. I've sort of thought of members as people who were already sick staying sick together. But I've gotten e-mail at c.a.g.ed that says very clearly some people don't even know what eating disorders are until they have the Internet, see pro- sites, and get sick. That's scary. That's not ok.

It's just an issue of so many victims- and I don't mean that in a "wounded, incapable, wronged people" sense - just in a "not at fault" sense. Someone like me who's in recovery and finds it painful, someone like the woman who became ill after reading through the sites, someone who's a part of the community - ultimately, we're all hurt by it. And that isn't ok. And we do need to do more than talk (or write.) But I can't save the world all by myself. And judging by the difference a non-individual-practice makes to my daydreams...I wouldn't want to.

chord

*or whomever

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