10:15 p.m. - 08/06/02
top ten reasons our chordling should not go without therapy.
I've managed to realign the sound waves in my brain well enough to survive the night. I'll admit it was starting to overwhelm me; the past week or so it seems I can barely get through a day without hours of what seems to be unfounded -depression?- It's really difficult to use a word that once had such a league of symptomatic offspring and is now so lonely in my head. It's not that I don't still experience serious depression, but the lack of days on end where I feel the need to jump off a bridge has me questioning if it's really all that severe. It's odd, I guess, but I lived with *horrible* depression for so long that mildly horrible is hard to act against. To trust. Maybe I just don't feel up to snuff for normal reasons...
The reason I was starting to wonder if it was depression is because it seems so largely physical, and if that's the case it makes even greater sense to bring it up with the psych tomorrow. I *am* having depression symptoms, like complete fatigue and so forth, but that could just as easily be from living a schedule and persona I know damn well does not agree with me. And the lack of emotional foundation for the depression could just as easily be evidence of how shut-off from my own feelings I am- i.e. it's not that I'm experiencing physical (chemical) depression which is therefore lacking the emotional basis but that I've cut myself off from the emotional basis to survive the two weeks in Sarahland.
Very often I am too analytic for my own good. I can come up with an explanation, relation, or correlary for just about anything. I create easy fictions, but I can no longer distinguish the truth. Tough tunafish.
Where I'm at is hard to decipher, though I've begun talking to myself again, and it's certainly helping. I tried to call Sara, as I still prefer talking to her, but she wasn't home and later I was too immersed in doing nothing to pull myself away. I'd like to talk with her tomorrow, I think, though tomorrow will dictate its action better than any prediction. The abbreviated contents of my mind are as follows:
1.) Neverland sucks. Neverland sucks because it did very horrible things to many very non-horrible people, and when it was not doing horrible things it was allowing them to happen. It was allowing Shandi to fall into severe depression and do things she would not otherwise have even considered and it was allowing Scott to be sucked into Jesus-vs-Gays issue and end up horribly confused and it was allowing me to completely lose my fucking mind and consider arson as a good alternative to living with the knowledge that those people are continuing their mind control operation with ease. If there were *one* impartial forum in the community I would speak out against it, but I can't think of anyway to be heard. Which is sad considering I have a lot at stake and would not simply bash them all to death. The middle school faculty saved my life. The high school nearly revoked it.
2.) The trip to Sarah's has me thinking a lot, similar to the way a pass would in the hospital. (For those of you who have Girl, Interrupted concepts of residential facilities, a pass is when your treatment team approves a proposal allowing you to spend time in the real world and then report back afterward. Fun, fun, fun.) I can't believe how wonderful some of it was and how horrible other parts were. I can't believe we actually fought. Argued. I wasn't exaggerating when I said I've never in my life been in an argument with my sister. Hurt, yes, angry, yes, argued? no. And I know I wanted this, I wanted the chance for us to fight and get through it because we'll be stronger that way (every therapy book on the planet and all my life experience says so) but I just can't bring myself to be okay with how this feels. It brings me back to what Dr. R said that one time about "let's hate this - let's hate this so we make it change." That's fine, I suppose - assuming what makes us stronger doesn't kill us.
3.) Sarah has talked for a long time about getting a snowflake tattoo, and was very disturbed to discover that Bjork already has one, meaning Sarah couldn't really get one without looking totally copycat-ish. Poor girl. It got me thinking about tattoos (which wasn't a far cry as I had already come up with several million ways I wanted to alter the color, length, or altogether existence of my hair) and I realized I'd want an atom. An atom, like this, but with a bit more spark. On my right shoulder. I doubt I'll ever get it, as neither commitment nor needles agree with me much, but it's interesting that I'm so sure that's what I'd want. I'm very much back in the atomgirl identity lately, which is kind of weird considering that the journal atomgirl was such a dark and painful time. But I don't equate atoms with a pained girl. I equate atoms with what I dreamed of being during that time, or more accurately, what I did not yet know I was.
4.) I have to find a way to tell Scott that it's ok to like boys. That boys are really very sweet despite how much they scare the crap out of me.
5.) Please let Sara be ok, please let Sara be ok, please let Sara be ok.
6.) I want to fix it all again. I want to make it better for you. All of it. Let me fix it, please. (I will not caretake, I will not caretake, I will not caretake.)
7.) All evening, there have been three razors sitting on the bathroom sink mocking me. Tempting me. Begging me. And even though the cutting urges have dulled down a bit as my thoughts have toned down their dissonance, it still isn't exactly fair for people to leave a trio of blades in plain view. My cutting urges have been sky high lately, which is really odd. I'm wondering if it has to do with how long I've been away from all my behaviors. Cutting was pretty much the equivalent of a "gateway drug" for me: although the food restricting took over long before the cutting escalated, the cutting was pretty much my first shot at destructive self-protection. So maybe now, the urges are trying to follow the same path back in. Whether that's accurate or not, I don't believe it means the cutting is harder for me to beat than the bulimarexia stuff. That "I don't have an eating disorder" monologue is just more ED bullshit. I think basically, purging replaced cutting and I've cut purging out so effectively, that cutting wants to return. But here's the thing: 90% of the times I have the desire to cut, I know, from my brain to my bones, that I'm not going to. So how can it be a temptation? How can I still call it the "urge to cut" when I know almost certainly that I won't follow through? And if it isn't just the urge to cut, if it's something more, what exactly *is* it?
I mean this: When I wouldn't purge, I would end up feeling a lot more than "I need to purge." I would end up screaming and crying and *feeling* things that I had no concept were inside of me while I was focusing on how much I needed to get the food out of me. But I still referred to it later as, "I wanted to purge really badly." I had added insight into why I was feeling that need, but I still called it the desire to purge because there was the desire to do so and because it was extremely difficult to *keep* from doing so. Now, most of the time, these behaviors (like purging or cutting) while emotionally difficult to wait out, are not such definite threats. So are they still "urges"? Or is there something else? Would it make more sense to say, "I felt this way, and that's the feeling that always made me cut before"? And if so, what *are* those feelings?
I know some of them. Shame is a definite one- with its henchmen- inferiority and fear. I had a lot of these "cutting urges" in NY after I would meet new people. I'd have a great time, but I'd be worried about how I was coming across, and afterward I'd want to cut- an old but familiar pattern. I don't struggle so much with it now because my life is so confined to people I feel safe with or people whose opinions mean little to me, but NY meant meeting lots of intriguing, impressive, new people and that brought a lot of it back, which is frightening to me. There were other feelings, though, too. Anger, and the instantaneous (and mildly amusing- after the thought) anger about anger. "Why are you mad, self? I'm so mad at you for being mad!" It's just a lot to deal with and the feelings come back really strong, and I want to cut, and I don't, and that leaves me with the feelings. I have to fight them again. I have to recover from them again. I hold to what I said about recovering once in the hospital and again outside of it. You're in a whole new environment, and the old tools serve you, but it's a whole new set of challenges. It's a whole new dangerous game.
8.) (bet you thought I forgot I was numbering - well you were wrong!) Why is everyone closing their journals for temporary hiatuses? Are they trying to make me jump off a ledge? Just, those of you who don't *need* to close your journals, (i.e. those who haven't already done so and won't be worse off if you continue to not do so) keep yours open, ok? Because even with Cami returning to exhibitionism in the near-future, I feel lonely without access to my daily haunts. *sighs pitifully* I need to find a book. I need to write a play.
9.) I want very very badly to see the movie Group, which is the very cool film about therapy (eee!) with one of the Sleater-Kinney girls acting a role. And it's nowhere near Oz for any of its scheduled screenings. They made my perfect-perfect-perfect movie, and they won't let me see it. I have a strong urge to beat the web-page with a splintery club. But I will be consoled by awaiting the new Tori Amos CD and hoping her tour is not so unwilling to curl its way into my state. Oh, to live in a place where guns did not outnumber the people to shoot with them...
10.) Red. Yes, well. There's this hole in that general chest/stomach area of mine reminding me that I haven't exactly gotten through the pre-vacation realization/past-due confession that I miss them terribly, was hurt by them, and was not ready to leave. That's another factor in it being a whole new challenge now. I don't have the same ability to think of RED, of returning to RED, of being at RED, to feel revived. It's like I'm writing my strategy from scratch now, though certainly some parts are still the same. I'm a team player in a singles match. I'm a bad metaphor in an endless paragraph.
Well not quite endless. Almost but not quite.
good night my someones
chord
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