10:15 p.m. - 08/20/03
in this world of overrated treasures / and underrated pleasures // i'm glad there is you
if I lived in the world I want to live in, I would have spent today being silly and giddy and decorating. doing so would have worn me out thoroughly (which is why I would have done it today, before the celebration starts), but now there would be color everywhere and probably some darling, dorky recovery mantras plastered haphazardly about. greeting cards I bought myself - sweet ones and funny ones and coping ones and congratulations ones and happy second birthday! ones - would stand proudly, begging to be read again and again.
and tomorrow, everyone would come. and no one would even really need to say, "happy this-or-that." we could just be, and sit, and laugh, and talk...the way we do. and every now and then, maybe someone would glance up at one of the quotes and shake their head, but they'd just hold me closer for having read it. or maybe someone would come up behind me and squeeze my shoulders with both their arms, and I would reach up to return the hug... but no one would really need to say, "happy two" because I would already really understand what a marvelously wonderful thing it is that I am alive.
this year I managed to call Rogers and tell them. I talked with Sara, even...and it was just as good as it's supposed to be! this year I don't really think it's about the fact that I haven't purged or binged, so much as the fact that I'm this much more alive. this much more Mary, whichever surname applies. I'm building more of a home with the people I love and still grieving the one home I still want desperately. I've taken huge steps with the caretaking/ codependency, I've managed to not relapse (not that I haven't slipped here and there) into cutting or the ed, and I'm working on the phobias. I've decided to tell myself that's true. I am working on them. I have been for months. my work never happens in the normal way. a lot of the healing will probably take place through weird introspection and sharing with the doc rather than the pushing for behavioral change. not that I intend to allow myself to continue acting out on phobias, incessantly. I'm just happy for the moment. I'm a little scared about tomorrow; I have no plan for what I want to do (though I do know that I'm starting to move my things into the apartment) ... and I remember how hard it was last year.
I told my mom that I don't care what we do with the apartment because I don't intend it to ever be my home. I hurt her and was sorry afterward. I was hurt and said it to spread the pain.
but this time does matter. it isn't simply an intermission between acts. it's not anticipation; it's action all its own. and tomorrow...may be sacred on my calendar, but in another sense it's just another day. as if the gift of a day could be minimized so easily. to think how many new and improved and unusual days we get to live. to think I almost missed out on this.
it sounds so wrong, somehow, but still...I'm really glad I didn't die. I'm so grateful to everyone who helped me make it...and I'm so grateful to myself. I'm going to have the best life ever, despite all the pain, and I would never have known that. I would never have experienced that. but now - now, oh, how I will...
it's worth every unbearable tear.
chord
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