7:30 p.m. - 08/28/02
:-we never stop looking for all the chances we've lost-:
Seizing the moment to dance in my chair to Winter Machine. In a few minutes Mom and The Person Asleep On Couch During Previous Entry will return and, though I can continue to dance then, it's far less cathartic when they're commenting.
Things remain ungood...or maybe just bizarre. I have no concept of what it's like to be in school anymore. I'm going through the motions of what I used to do, working to subtract the shame I felt then, and at the same time aware of how pointless the work I'm doing truly is. The last time I was taking a full high school courseload I guessed that the work was erroneous, but I had not yet attempted life without it. Now, I know perfectly well that I would be happier, healthier, more peaceful, more engaged, and more intelligent, were I not in school. I used to taste this is the summer, but didn't know until the past year that life could be lived in such a way. I'm looking forward to getting a schedule set so that my whole life does not have to be classes. I figure once I've been in this mess for a week or two, I'll have it down, and I'll also have made a significant enough impression on my teachers. At this point, I'm doing what I can to keep all seven classes in the air like spinning plates because I don't have the opportunity to make an insightful or witty remark in class and win them over. These are the people who decide what proportion of the busywork applies to me and how much leniency compensates for doing the work independently. I need them to dig me.
I think I like my physics teacher. Which is really odd considering I've never met him. Something about his handwriting and the way he writes his notes makes me happy. He offered to come out and help with labs, which Mistrandy said was probably because he didn't trust her, but it just seemed nice to me. He actually wrote on the first assignment that I should call him if I have questions, and I've just started thinking that even though I'd probably have to pop a few extra pills (the ever-so-rare Alprazolam/ Propranolol regimen) it would be nice to meet someone new. It would be nice to not send assignments into black holes. It would be nice to have a new teacher who I like and who likes me. Mistrandy is great and she treats me really well, and it's nice to have someone who knows me well enough to advocate for me back in the building...but...I kind of miss the first-week buzz of new faces, new voices, a new approach. I kind of miss coming home bitching about how this teacher has a voice like nails on the chalkboard he spends *all hour* writing on and giddy over the second-year lit teacher who has glitter in her eyes. And something feels off with Mistrandy, which I don't enjoy. Something's wrong and I'm not sure why. I still really like her, but I've started wondering who else I might have had.
I feel really ashamed around her, and even though I have the therapy mantra "no one can make you feel" running in my head, I'm not sure it's completely about me. She grew up and continues to grow in a very competitive, athletic world, and I hate competition. I hate putting people down, being put down, being judged. Even jokingly. My brothers were very good at cutting humor, and I don't enjoy it. It's weird because she is so far from cutting, so far from malicious, but I still feel like I don't amuse her. She doesn't seem to laugh at my jokes as much and she doesn't seem as impressed at the loads of work I've finished. I guess it isn't her job to cheer-lead but I still feel a little lonely. I'm working really hard to counter shame thoughts, and I haven't noticed very many of them, or very loud ones, so it's weird that I feel it so consistently with her.
Ok, consistently as in two visits in a row. I'm suspending judgment until sometime next fall. mwa.
I remain blind. Yesterday's trip to the eye doctor proved belatedly successful. The doctor was nice, and the eye-doctor-equivalent of a nurse practioner was cool, too, until he turned salesman and tried to have me try on frames. I really didn't need to see the Tommy Hilfiger glasses with the built in glare-repellant, thanks. I did find some pretty cute frames, though. I wanted something totally spunky, like thick black cat glasses or something, but I didn't like them on. I'm a little more subtly spunky, I think. I want the cute punkness that draws your attention but leaves some mystery. And I can't always handle being conspicuous. So I found these slightly-more-square-than-oval frames a little thinner than the plastic ones that are so "in" these days, but still black. Which means they blend with my hair and eyebrows more than my face, which I like. My face is in bad shape as I keep putting my grubby hands in front of it to calm down or hide...
Maybe the shame is not *completely* vanished...
I ended the session with Dr. R that way today. Head behind hands, a muffled speaking through my palms. He heard me all the same, which impressed me almost as much as the fact that I managed to speak at all. The appointment didn't go badly, but it took an odd and kind of spontaneous track. As in he didn't ask me the question he *always* asks about how the week has been and then bring some of what was up last week into what happened during this one. Instead he talked about the symposium/performances of my play that are happening near Neverland (I guess my parents told him it was approved?) and we went around that for awhile. About what it was like to have people see my plays and tell me what they saw in them, specifically when people didn't realize their perception of the piece reflected *their perception* and not necessarily *my experience.* At one point he asked if I ever wondered if what they perceived that I hadn't intended *was* in the play, as in- did their questioning what I meant make me question it myself? I could only think of one example.
I told him that in nearly every poem, every play, and every story I send to my sister, she sees sexual abuse. Every. time. And I understand this because- to exaggerate a bit- she sees it in everything else, too. And she knows it's about her. But because I finally confessed to myself that what happened *to me* did affect me, I occasionally wonder if that does sneak into my work. I'm still scared of the idea that things I don't fully remember or don't remember at all could have seeped in so far, and her comments make me wonder.
He talked about what it's like to have an experience vicarously, perhaps to be excited about someone else's achievement, or traumatized by their abuse, something I know all too well. I felt like it might be relevant here, but I also knew that I didn't learn what happened to Sarah until I was in middle school, and I wasn't willing to call that the answer, and overlook what had *also happened to me.* (Sometimes I need to defend to my head that I was abused, a fact that's hard to write. Who wants it to be true, anyway?)
And so we said together that I'd been through some shit, and I felt I'd succesfully closed that little box of 'Dora's...
A while later, we were back on plays and I said something about how I had to disconnect the writing I was doing at any given moment from anything that had happened with my writing in the past. Even as I write a script and envision the play it represents, I have to pretend it will never be produced. I have to pretend I'll never revise an essay. Otherwise I attempt to edit as I write, and life turns hellish. I told him that I have to pretend that the step I'm in is the last one or I start trying to do all of them at once. And he asked if I ever felt that way in life.
The only example I could think of had to do with seeing him or seeing someone else after the eight-weeks-away-from-Harriet mark arrived. He told me at one point that maybe I didn't have to decide Right That Moment, maybe I could just feel it out for a couple of weeks, and I told him that wouldn't work because if I was going to have to have an answer in two weeks, I would try to have one now. A deadline rather than an extension. And of course my mentioning this particular case intrigued him and he asked me what I thought would have been the right decision then.
To see him, of course, I said. But things were silly then, and I was confused. I didn't realize that some of my worries were ingrained and basically irrelevant.
Like what?
Well, I was worried about him being connnected to my parents, which is completely erroneous but not as important as I thought...and...erm...clear throat a few bazillion times...the fact that he was a guy wasn't something I thought I could handle.
We talked about what that meant, and he said male and female therapists can bring up different things for a patient, and I said that I didn't think it mattered anymore. That I know I trust female people more quickly, and even though I've worked hard on it, I haven't cured it yet. That thinking I might be leaving in a year, I thought it best to work with someone I could connect with as quickly as possible. I overlooked that I was already connected to him, and I overlooked that Harriet was a woman and I had not exactly connected with her...
We talked about trust and how I have it with him. I feel safe when I talk with him; I feel like I can say whatever, that I can say "alright, we're going to stop this track now" (which I almost never do, but I know I *could*) or "why, why, why did you say that?" and he'll take it into account. He's not like my mom in that; when I tell him to stop, he does. And I need that. It's a lot more of my fear of people than gender. People need to understand words like "no" and "yes" - "stop" "enough" and "more." Anyway. We know this. What else?
He asked if I thought my fear of boys (it's easier to say it that way, hee) came from the abuse I knew of and experienced. I told him it was possible that what happened to my sister had some effect, that I hadn't really thought about it, but I wasn't sure that whatever happened to me had done anything.
He said abuse is a blanket statement; we act like every situation fits into it but maybe it doesn't. I know he was trying to be sweet, but right now I would have felt safer to have him just say that people who hurt other people that way are bad and icky and at fault. Because I was starting to shake a little and my fingers were running over my palms like I was half-gypsy, half-stimulated-cheetah.
So I told him what I haven't told him (as if I've told him *anything* regarding this)- which was that the first time that I was abused it was by a boy and I don't remember squat. The second time it was by a girl and I have bits and pieces. And I don't understand how I could more disturbed by boys when I was also hurt that way by a girl. I told him some other details, too, like that she's younger than me, that it was the first and last time we met, and that my parents don't know. That no one knew until Rogers. I did my best to act as if I didn't know, either, really.
It was weird. I hadn't expected to talk about any of this, as if the week hasn't been full enough without dredging up past-pains, and I wanted to tell him some of what was happening *now* but we were delving into such overwhelming things, that I couldn't just topic-jump the way part of me wanted to. I couldn't be like, "so, yeah, that was weird; oh and, Dave called this week..." It was a dangerous topic to be broaching, and I knew I'd need some closure to survive having talked about it...
Obviously, all of this filled an hour, and he said, "Same time next week?" and in my head I started thinking, "you mean a year from now? like the way last Wednesday was a year ago? you mean another week of being completely overwhlemed and crazy and alone short-distance-wise?" I went inside myself, and I put my hands over my face so I'd be safe, and he moved back into his chair because obviously we couldn't end like *this* and I forced forth the, "can we meet before that?" words that were so so hard, and I knew that it was a three day weekend coming up, and he was taking off, and there just wasn't anyway.
And he said. Sure. Let's get your Mom. How about Friday? I nearly cried with relief.
He came back in after working out the schedule with her and he asked me if the time would work, and if it was soon enough (Friday? Too far away? Do you see why I love him so much?) and I told him, no, I could make it til Friday, and he looked really glad. I was really glad that he was worried even though it made me feel worried, too. I was really glad that he felt like I was a priority and I needed to find my way into his schedule as soon as *I needed* to be there...because now maybe I can believe I'm a priority, too. I just needed to talk to him; I needed a place to sound off other than a journal. And maybe I need to cry again...Cry about being angry and lonely, abandoned and scared. Cry about grieving and looking for faith and not being sure of everything. Cry because a woman has been here, been sleeping on our couch, because she needs a family and a home right now, and I feel really compelled to be here for her, at the same time I want to say, "Why does my mom know to bring you home, and didn't know to make a home for me? Why is it that a stranger takes you into her home, and no one at Rogers would adopt me? Why is it that all over the world are surrogate families, but when I find mine, they, too, send me away?"
Of course I want to be there for her. I offered her my home, my stories, my bed, my attention. But it's always painful to have someone who looks at my mom as a guardian and my house as a sanctuary when I've never had that here. It's always hard when the students get more than the daughters...
They're sitting about five feet from me, and if I start crying they will notice. My mom's been really good to me lately, and I've noticed it, I'm grateful for it, but I still have crying to do, and this is not a moment I can do it.
I'm going to do some pointless magazine-clipping for some pointless classes now...
love
chord
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