7:11 p.m. - 07/29/03
..you'll say you'd never give up seeing eye to eye..
dear red.
I just wrote you this whole long letter; well, not whole, I didn't get to finish it, but I was almost there...and I reached for a kleenex and now it's all gone. why does life have to be that way? I'm fighting enough of what's gone without the words disappearing, too. oh, Red. I'm going to call you tomorrow. I would have called you today, but I was so knocked down by depression-and-possibly-migraine this morning that I couldn't think of picking up the phone. then this afternoon I felt crazy, too crazy to talk, too desperate, and by the time I was crying and feeling honest, you were down in the dining room helping girls I don't know eat their dinners. tomorrow I will call you. tomorrow, my mom won't be home in the morning, so I'll try you, and if I don't get you, I'll try again tomorrow night. so if I don't catch Steph, maybe I'll luck out and talk to Sara^ or something. I promise I'll call tomorrow.
I don't know why every time it happens, every time these feelings kick up a notch or two, I feel like it's so different from the others. This time I really am going to lose you. This time I really won't make it through the pain. This time my heart really will break, literally; it will stop beating. I don't know how to not believe those things. I know they must sound crazy, when you only see the one layer: the hospital in which you work. You never see the home, so maybe you can't understand. Maybe you can't understand or maybe you do and you don't want me to know. I don't know. All I know is how hard I've fought. I've put every fiber of being and every ounce of strength I have into staying well - for what? For you. I know it sounds crazy. I know you probably don't understand. If the most important thing in the world to me is you and getting better means I can't be with you, then why would I be getting better? there must be something else, some other reason; I'm inflating your importance - I'm hiding what's true.
but I'm not. I'm really and truly not. see. you mean everything to me. there's nothing I want more than to be with you, and I know that getting better seals the space between us; every time I don't give into this sickness, I'm ensuring the fact that I won't ever be able to live with you again. and that is what I want most. but I also very much want to be the person who I think you'd have pride in - I want to live up to everything you gave to me. I'm your apprentice, Red. I'm your daughter and your living proof, and I don't take that lightly, I can't. It's not the type of home or family that's written in my skin; no one can say, "oh, you look just like them." and that's what I want to hear. so I carve every detail of my life in your image; I try with all my might to hang onto those Wisconsin o's, to grasp tight recovery, and crocheting, and Spongebob, and yogurt pretzels, and sage and every little thing that will connect me to you. this one time, I'm putting pleasing someone ahead of getting what I want. because of course I don't want relapse. I'm wired for recovery; I'm built for it. introspection, emotions, deep conversations, self-analysis - let's face it, this is the good stuff to me. it's hardly a chore most days. but I don't fight for recovery because I enjoy it. I don't fight for recovery because I hate this illness, even though I hate this illness so so much. I fight because I love you. and see, I want to be a good woman. I want to be someone you'd be willing to call yours, even if you didn't understand why. I want to show everyone that you did save my life, and you did give me myself; I don't want to undermine it by getting sick. I don't want to throw all those gifts in your face by turning around now. I just wish you could understand. I wish you could know what it's like in the layers below hospital, in the layers where you're home. I wish you could understand that, so you could understand me. and maybe if I made sense, you'd love me. maybe if you understood this has nothing to do with "patient" and "doctor" and "staff" - you'd be willing to say if you do.
Dave. I want you to know that I respect your opinion enough now that I have to look at it; it has the power to hurt me. I will look at your version of what happened with Tracy, and I will feel pain at the parts of that I take on as truth. But I won't fall over this time, Dave. Your certainty can't knock me down, and it can't knock away all the parts of Tracy's story that I know are true, now, that I've determined myself. You can't knock away my story either, Dave. Even if you don't understand it. I hate what you told Sara...that we're the kind who could live there forever. It isn't a type, Dave. I'm not of a certain mold. I didn't come into Rogers built in such a way that I could not let go of it; I had an experience there that changed me so fundamentally, I chose not to let go of it. And, God, I wish that you could understand how impossibly difficult it has been to hold onto you. To all of Rogers. I wish you could understand how much pain there is involved with that. Most of all, I wish you could understand why, really understand, and I don't know, maybe you do. Maybe you understand better than you've ever let me see. Or maybe you can't see. You know I was never good at separating your defenses from your reality, Dave. I don't know the truth from the fiction here. I just wish you knew my truth because I think if you did, you'd respect it. I think you'd respect the choice I've made, to keep fighting for a life that leads me away from the one place I can imagine wanting to be. I wish you could know that.
But how can you? I don't know if you listen, and you can't experience it yourself. You don't know what the comforters feel like as we fall asleep below them. You don't know how the RC office changes day to day, shift to shift. Has Dwight ever hugged you and commended you on your risk-taking, your hard work, and your integrity? Do you know what it's like to never go further than the ropes course unescorted? You've never lived in a world that miniature. You've never fought the good fight against barbecued tofu; you don't know why we crochet. You don't know how the yarn feels against your fingers if it's acrylic or if it's homespun. You don't know what it's like to hold a gigantic plastic hook or a tiny metal one. You don't know. Lisa's never walked through the house of your senses and agreed to adopt you without hesitation. Jenifer's never taught you how to spite a small town and helped you to believe in your own perception before you knew you had one. And have you ever screwed with yourself, Dave? Have you ever done something to outrage yourself, only to discover that the outrageous thing has actually pushed you closer to necessary understanding? Have you ever walked into a building a martyr and out of it a miracle? Have you been transfigured and transformed that way? Have you ever had a home where anytime day or night you could find someone to hold you while you cried? Have you ever given yourself entirely to that upbringing and had to leave?
I wish you could understand, Dave. I really do. I wish all the staff could understand. I don't think you'd respond with anything but sympathy if you could really know. I think you'd look me in my eyes because I think if you could see it for what it really is - not some stupid weakness or a phony baloney escape but a real true connection to a truly extraordinary home - you would respect it. I wish I could hear that much from you. I wish you could look at my truth, with enough vulnerability to be affected by it, and I wish you could meet my eyes. Meet me on this one. Like the day I read my relapse nightmare, and you said it almost made you tell me I could stay. You understood some of it then; you must have. You also understood what I still don't entirely - that I needed to leave. But I'd like to be given what I can, you know. I'd like to be given just enough of this to say that I didn't get the opposite of what I fought for. That I didn't lose everything in getting better.
I have gained myself, and I tell you she means everything. But there's this thing about myself; she talks constantly of home, and she's in love with a family she doesn't bear well losing. So tomorrow I'll call, and I'll tell you how I am doing here...but if you have the slightest impulse to tell me how I'm there, please do. Give a girl who put aside her best thing to live on your terms reason to cry her tears with a brave smile. If you feel the slightest push to claim me, do.
Because in many ways, I'm all I have left of you.
chord
^RC
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