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5:20 p.m. - 06/12/02
i'm writing this entry for myself. it probably won't matter to you.
"Jealousy is the apprehension of superiority." -Shenstone

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jealousy is one of those emotions i've restricted throughout most of my experience, which leaves me relatively naive in feeling it. it tends to stem from my feelings of inadequacy and a perceived powerlessness regarding my situation. i.e. i feel like i am markedly less than someone else, and i feel incapable of changing this reality. lately, jealousy is high on my list of emotive experiences; it's high across the board of my relationships, and i don't exactly know how to deal with this. do i avoid the people who spur my jealousy, or do i brave a conversation with the core of it? there is little precedent here. i faced anger for the first time at rogers. jealousy is asking for her turn.

jealousy is the green-eyed monster, the ugly stepsisters who never find the prince. jealousy is wrong the way anger was wrong. but i am feeling jealousy. and i am not wrong...

i am not trying to conquer my jealousy; i am trying to understand it. i think it comes from my lack of fulfillment. my life was fundamentally based around achievement for a long time, and the cornerstone of this basis was the (oh-so-strong) belief that i would be happy once i achieved whatever goal or self i was currently after. when i see others achieve what i have not yet, whether something i truly want or something i believe i 'should' own, i respond with the deep feeling that my happiness has been stolen from me. when someone manages to win an award that i have won or achieve a level i have previously managed, i still believe this somehow negates my achievement. i thought this came from my own feelings of inferiority- i had to achieve extra in order to be 'even' with others, and if they rose to my achievement, i was now less than them. so why am i feeling it now, if my inferiority is a fleeting experience? has it remained, one more outdated belief, one more former survival skill i do not need? or does it have more basis than i previously realized? is there some othe reason that i feel i have to do more than everyone else, and i have to do it separately, uniquely for it to be worth anything?

having definined myself (with good reason) through achievement plays into this. i know that. if i am defined by my achievement, the parallel achievements of others threaten my very idenitity, which is one of my greatest fears. i need to be noticed, to be worth noticing, to be special enough that someone will affirm i'm alive. i need to know i'm not invisible, and that there's a reason for this. a certain level of conspicuousness agrees with me; i need the attention of others to justify my own continued life.

i've gotten a lot better with this, but it's still true. and i suppose it's true right now because my relational world is so small. beyond cyberspace, moreso beyond snail mail, i have three people i communicate with, three people that i see and touch, three who consistently affect me...if my worth rests, even partially, on their action toward me, i suppose it makes sense that i would feel so defensive against the achievements of others. i can't be upstaged, overshadowed, or forgotten. right now, two of the people i live with are people who helped teach me the exorbitant 'value' of achievement (my parents) and the only other person i regularly encounter spends an hour a week with me. not to mention i am majorally enmeshed in my school issues right now, and those obviously trigger me to question whether i have the right to happiness if i don't experience consistently visible successes. i experienced a cutthroat, competitve school environment during the majority of my developmental years. despite my progress from that time, i don't fully understand that who i am is enough and will be enough no matter what my friends manage.

i contacted my best friend from middle school, a girl named heather, a few days ago, and though she's been lovely to me, i'm having nightmares where she wins national YPI contests. i'm having nightmares where the tallest girls in my academic class (i think as a child i equated height with intelligence, something about the 'raising the bar' metaphor) win parts in plays and proceed to belittle my lack of effort and talent in that arena. i love this girl, i have a great deal of fun with her, but within hours of her returning to my life, my subconscious has spotlit the terror that she will out-do my own effort.

i could take a torch to neverland. i could send a plague of locusts that direction. last night they had a major storm, leaving trees down everywhere. but storms are beautiful. and the pain hanging in the air there is the antithesis of beautiful.

i currently feel threatened by:

heather and shandi being section leaders in the symphonic band. heather dating andy. the new group of ypi conference winners. every girl in the world who is actually "pretty."

i currently feel inadequate because:

scott hasn't responded to my e-mail. neither has andy, and it's been ages since i sent that one. and then there's jenna, but why bring that up again...? i comforted myself with a thought of lori today, and if there's anyone who makes me feel like a fraction of my true self, it's lori. not through any fault of her own. just because she's basically who i want to be when i am honest in my head. i'm not a madrigal singer anymore, and i do not star in plays.

i am currently surprised to discover that i did not escape dealing with my hometown by moving away. i bought myself some time; i didn't have to deal with all the memories on top of my fledgling recovering, but i don't have the luxury of ignoring what i went through. it occurs to me that this might be why i'm still living with my parents, at least in part. it's oddly difficult to heal something when there's such distance between you and it. so suddenly, i have all this jealousy to counter all the detachment. suddenly, i would give so much to sit for ten minutes with miss spaniels, for ten minutes to drill into her head all the wrongs she's done me.

i would give so much to understand why this is suddenly so infuriating. the good news is, my old angers have calmed a bit. i only hate stewart when i think about him, and that isn't often. it's no longer so violent, though i don't know that i'd trust myself to be within hitting/spitting/throw-a-fitting distance of him. i can live with that. if someone could rape my hero without there being a seed of fury inside me, i don't think i'd feel right. and then...you know...there's also what he did to me.

dr. r is amazingly skilled at pulling me out of myself. i was beyond ill again this morning, and all i wanted was to throw up (not in a bulimic way), curl up (not in a waiting room), and sleep myself better. but he managed to find a good mood inside me, and we talked fairly happily, though the meat of it is slipping my mind. we talked a little about what this illness means to me- because i said something similar to, "this is who i am" and he wanted me to elaborate on why this was "who i am" instead of "something i struggle with" etc. so i explained that the symptoms and in many ways the illness, is something with which i struggle. but the recovery, the process of self-inspection, self-awarness, and personal evolution is something i consider intrinsic to who i am, not simply something i've been through...when i told him that i wouldn't give up what i've gone through, he didn't look at me like i was crazy. he looked at me like he saw something live inside me, something strong and honest and affirm-able.

i told him that going out had been a little easier while joe was here because i started to have good experiences which meant that i started to imagine good experiences when i was invited, instead of my usual 'imagine the worst' response. i told him that monday had pushed me back a little largely because, for whatever reason, fiction is as weighty in my world as reality. if i imagine going out and having a horrific experience, it's equal to having gone out and had this experience, which means that if i leave, i'm going out *again* to risk the same experience. i told him that at times, my strong inner world was an asset because it meant i could seek counsel in myself when i was struggling to much to ask for help, and be almost as altered as if i'd actually talked to someone. i told him about how often i talk to myself, and how i usually do so with a person in mind, as if i'm talking with them. i no longer cared how crazy this was. i know it works for me.

he said (he! the brilliant, qualified doctor-man) "do you realize what a sign of health that is?" erm...no...i just know it works. "that's extremely healthy!" which is cool.

and we talked about my physical health, and he told me that if they don't find anything wrong when i see the doctor (which i need to do, he said) that will be ok; we won't disregard the symptoms. he said we need to make sure that the symptoms aren't pointing to something larger, and if we cover all bases and find they aren't, we can just treat the symptoms. he said we're going to create a new model to replace what happened to me when i was a child with supposedly fabricated stomachaches. we're going to fix this, no matter how mysterious it is.

i'm a little terrified regarding the appointment, which has been rescheduled for tomorrow morning...terrified about small things like that they'll announce my weight before i can stop them from telling me...terrified about big things - like diabetes, hypoglycemia. scared.

when i told him that my skin is clammy, i'm thirsty all the time, and i can't eat sugar without getting much much worse, he became much more adamant that i see a doctor. this was the same as him diagnosing me. but he caught on to the track racing through my head and said, "you know, if this were anything bad, it would have been much worse in the beginning- and if it were degnerative, it would be *a lot* more evident after so long. which isn't to say that you should just quit worrying, I'd be worried, too if it were me...but know that if this were something really huge, we would have known by now."

that's good. right? i mean, i'm probably not dying. i'm probably just...troubled. my goal is to survive whatever is wrong and also...to survive the doctor's appointment tomorrow. medical offices. ahhhhh!

chord

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