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10:46 p.m. - 06/25/03
and there's nothing wrong but there is something more.
Come on words. You were aching at the edges of me maybe ten minutes ago. No wait, that wasn't words. That was emotion without speech. So maybe it does make sense that I can't seem to loosen a phrase from my fingers now, the way I thought I would. I've spent years trying to translate from the sensory experience of things into English, and it's still a terrific struggle. I know the words seem good enough, but if you felt the senses, if you could understand the gap. ...Have you ever tried to draw a picture of a dream?

...oh, I'm ok. I worry there might be some kind of question about that, considering that a few hours of absence from journaling, in my case, tends to look conspicuous. I've done a (very) little journaling in the old-fashioned, private, in-a-notebook way, as I tried to pry my way through thoughts that make my head spin. Values, mainly. I'm not sure how to have strict values and beliefs without being one of the N*land Nazis. That's not on my mind right now, though...or rather, it's on my mind extremely lightly, to distract me from everything else. From the intensity of feeling that maybe I couldn't translate. If I'd just jumped in here the second it happened...But no. I can call it up now, if I want to...

Do I want to? ...I swear, by the time, I'm finished with this record, homesickness will have made it into the medical diagnostic manuals.

It's about Tracy and Rogers and everyone who made it home. It's about heartening developments that nevertheless brush wounds. It's about a place that existed (two months less than) two years ago between a smattering of people, and the remaining people, and what they mean, and where they are. It's about the same thing it's always about, the same thing that won't stop mattering no matter how much I (occasionally) want it to. It's about the information Sara can give me being inside the revised version. Rogers-II. I wanted to say everything that came up when she called me tonight, after I'd been thinking about her all day, and Grahams had just sort of appeared on my bed, and...I'd been wishing I could talk with her. Missing her so much and wondering what's transpired. Had she adjusted? Was she loving it there? Was she reliving her first experience? Was it something different? How did she feel about me, and if I could track down the way to call her, would she want that?

Those questions are more easily answered than feelings are translated, so maybe I'll start there. She's settled in a bit, she's having a very different experience than the first time - it's more focused on her than on her relationships with the group and she's doing more of the emotional work behind the behaviors. She's partly glad about that because it means that no one can touch her first experience; it remains out of reach, just as we've wanted to believe it would. And she called me, so obviously she wants to talk to me, and she sounded really glad to be talking with me specifically. I can understand if we're closer than she and the girls she's with now are; I had that experience with most of the residents toward the end of my stay. I didn't feel as tightly-knit (for the most part) as I had with the earlier group. So, we're still leaning on each other, and hey that's everything.

My plan to run full-speed into my Rogers work may not have been as effective as I hoped...but the reality of Sara being on the inside of something I'm trying to deal with from without was not conjured by my head alone. It's very real. And so when she called, and she started to talk about the pink chairs, I remembered them. I remembered with her, several of our realities during the original Rogers. And then I listened to her tell me about how the pieces (people) of the original Rogers have progressed. She told me that Sara (RC-Sara) said hi, and even offered to let me talk to her, which I didn't, afraid of what I'd feel afterward. (Or what I wouldn't be able to say I felt during.) She said that everyone remembers me. Everyone. She said they ask how I'm doing. She said when she got the package I sent her (I sent her a package) today, she showed parts of it to Dave, and he said, "What's this?" and she beat him over the head with, "It's me and Mary. We're really close, Dave." That hasn't changed. She said when he saw it he thought it was really sweet, and I just sort of caved in, inside, wanting to talk about it (about anything) with him myself. Wanting to hear what he has to say about me, all bullshit aside. Even his own bullshit. Even the cockiness and the certainty. Wanting to be entirely vulnerable and receive the same from him and wondering if that's impossible. She said that she'd told him that she wasn't ready to leave the last time, when she discharged, and he'd told her she was. That stung a bit; I wondered if it was the same response he'd give me had I found the courage to say the same. I wasn't ready. More like, it wasn't time. I've made it, yes, I continue to make it, but it was too soon. I needed more time.

...She said that she and Leah can talk about me, and it's like I'm there. I'm that real to them. I remain real to them. No one has forgotten me. No one has stopped having feelings about me. No one has cast me aside as insignificant or lost my memory in the evolution of their past year and a half...

A part of me is there, not just with Sara. A part of me is there, in those rooms, on those grounds, on that ropes course, in that air. A part of me remains and will remain there always.

I just...can't stop asking...can't stop plotting...if you remember and care why don't you write...what can I do to make you keep in touch? And would it be enough if you did? Would it matter if it weren't enough, so long as it were something? Somehow it seems like, even if I had to face the devestation that their chosen way of staying linked to me wasn't enough, it would be better to have the link. Better than the invisible link it's so difficult to trust extends beyond our history. But. Stacy hasn't been avoiding me; her computer's dead. Sara specifically said to tell me hi. Dave was thinking about me today, while I was thinking so much, about Rogers. She said everyone remembers me. She said it's like I'm there.

It is almost. And that's what's touching the sore spots in my heart, making them shine with something like pain and something like healing. I am so so glad I have her in my life. I am so so glad that I've been given the gift of her second Rogers experience. I am so so glad I see Dr. R tomorrow. The tears didn't find their way out tonight; it's pouring outside, I'll probably follow that example tomorrow. I'll sound like the thunder, a few beats afterward. It isn't touchable; it will not disappear. Tomorrow when he asks me how home has been with Dad and Mom and divorcing, I'll say, "home? Oh, yes. Let's talk about home." Except he already knows better than to call something that isn't Rogers home.

It's just...incredible. That you can be so eternally bound to something (thankfully) and so separated from it. That I can be so connected and so isolated simultaneously. Dave saw the package, understood the Tracy things. ...Why doesn't he write back? Why doesn't Sara (rc)?

Why can't the thunder and the lightning stay together just this once?

chord

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