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10:45 p.m. - 09/25/02
+little reprieves+
I had this plan to come here and be all offbeat and excited because I finally found someone (my brother John) who shares my opinion that John Mayer is evil. More specifically, the Evil Dave Matthews, but evil is the important part. I actually liked "No Such Thing" when I heard it, but that man has no right to compare my body to a wonderland, ok? And so I was going to come here and be silly talking about this because I'm over-tired and every now and again I like to sound like I'm not undermedicated and overdramatized.

But I'm feeling more tired and less spunky now. Mostly I'm feeling quiet. I just read perceptions new entry and it's the first reference to suicide that I've read in a very long time, without feeling somehow more hollow and more dead. I was paging through my psych book today, trying to study for a test, and I ended up just looking through their section on eating disorders, which of course left me in a really sour, sad mood (it's. not. about. food) and now I wonder if some day I'll read something about ed-s that makes me feel like his entry did. it's weird because it is difficult to read; it is kind of triggering. but it's so quietly hopeful, too, so simple in a way. it isn't me with a friend trying to explain to them why I feel crazy or me with a friend trying to explain to them why they can never ever do this again...it's just...two people treating each other like people. Somehow that made me feel good.

I really miss my girl. All my girls, but Tracy seems further away sometimes. And then again, she's the only one I know has been in my room. She's the only one I'm not afraid to talk to in the dark.

I don't know why the world is this way. Why we lose people we love, why darling boys follow horrid days with vicious nightmares, why art-quality girls feel creativity is the price of their calm. I don't know why we have to bargain with our own lives, gamble them away; I don't understand, and I hope you know you are wanted in this life by someone. You don't know how many would cry for you because we those who would don't know it either. I didn't plan to talk about this tonight.

I did really well on my physics test. Again. I think I might possibly have earned the highest grade in my class, which is absolutely crazy. I think I'm damn near a 4.0, which I don't believe I've had since fifth grade. I'm just in absolute shock, and it's scary and it's beautiful, and even though I don't want to be the girl who only feels good so long as she's getting As, I think maybe if I keep shouting my success with this class, I'll start to feel like it really is an achievement. Maybe if I keep bragging and having people say, "Wow. And in Physics," I'll feel like it really is an accomplishment to do well. I want to think I'm smart again some day.

I have a theory that N*land teaches a different grading scale than the one they copy for the handbook. I think what they call a 90 is really a -10%, 80 a -20, and so forth. I think you learn, I learned, to judge yourself based on how far you are from flawless. Perfection is the norm. It's not something you strive for; it's something simple, and if you can't achieve it you are wrong. That's what they taught me. I start to feel it looking at the points I missed on this test, and then I go, "I got an A. On a test in a class that brings up really scary pain. In a subject I haven't thought I could handle since the time I was ten and unbreakable. I'm homebound and above the mean/median scores for my class. I'm not a dope; I'm not."

I want to learn a real grading scale. One that says, "Even cashiers don't care about those last few pennies" and eventually fades into "Why are we even evaluating this; don't you know you do no wrong so long as you follow what you know?"

I want these things.

I have an exhausting day, and there's so much I want to write but can't put out before my eyes fall shut. I'll save what happened with my dad while he was home and what happened with my dad today at work for later, and just try and outline the Dr. R appointment. I'd leave that, too, but I don't want to forget things, and I figure I'll go over it in my head, even if I don't write it here, which will keep me up longer, et cetera. *yawn*

It went really well. He was actually fairly punctual, which he never is (and I accept this because it means he never throws me out when I'm not ready to go) which made me feel better because we were able to jump right in. I knew I had a lot to say, and I could have started anywhere. I could have said, "here's what's going on with school" or "here's where my friends are" or "here's how I feel about RED" or "my parents" or whatever else, but I knew somehwere in me that if I just started talking, in the end I would go home feeling like I'd missed the opporutnity again. And again, I would consider e-mailing him to say all the "I'm scared to talk to you even though I trust you more than I can say" sorts of words, and I wouldn't e-mail him, I'd say "I'll just do it next Wednesday" and then I'd repeat it like a shampoo-cycle, over and over again. I didn't want that. I was really scared, but the words were practiced, and they started to come out. I told him I felt disconnected from myself, from the certainty that I wanted to recover, and he asked what I would define as being sick again. What I thought of when my head said, "I'm not sure I don't want to be sick again."

I told him I thought of "cutting" and "restricting" and "purging." I didn't tell him the afterthought: the hospital. I'll say it soon, and it's not as if he didn't know.

So we talked about how those were my coping mechanisms, and if they've been taken away but not replaced, of course I'm feeling defenseless and crazy. We talked about how the way I have learned to deal with my problems- the "don't use behaviors, feelings will come up, you will talk your way through them way" is not working because I can't really tell what I'm feeling, and I don't feel safe talking. I told him I'm afraid, as usual, that people will disappear, that people will leave. I told him everyone leaves. He asked who everyone was. I said, "No really, I mean *everyone.* My friends, and Rogers, and even Harriet." I stressed Harriet, I thought, because I was trying to show him that it wasn't simply people I loved that left me; it was the entire world. And he was a darling and made the connection that if I was stressing "my old therapist left me" I might be afraid that he was going to do the same.

Sometimes, he's so clairvoyant, I think he reads this journal. Or maybe God is an internet-junkie and plans my life according to these splatterings of words.

I was afraid he wasn't going to pick up on it, and I wasn't going to be able to explain. I was afraid he was going to pick another word to stress, and we'd climb off on an equally valid, but less immediately-important, tangent. But he got it. He told me that he could say, "What you tell me is not going to change how I feel about you or that I want to help you" (and of course, in doing so, said it anyway) but he didn't think that would be enough. After all, this is real pain I have, and very real fear. I was nearly sculpture from my tension; he knew it was real.

So he talked about groundwork. About how it didn't make sense to push these unexpressed ideas and feelings, the ones I can't even access, to the surface when I didn't feel safe. That another option was to lay some groundwork, so that we make his office, his silly leathery office, the least scary place to say scary things. He said that generally, it's more frightening to lay the groundwork, to prepare for speaking, than it actually is to speak. And I could see that, actually, thinking about Rogers. It might just be because I don't know what I haven't told him, but I know that the time before I got angry (for instance), trying to gauge whether or not I could be angry, considering it, was much more frightening than actually throwing books around and crying, "oh god, don't leave me now" afterward. It was harder to ask them to listen to me than it was to actually speak. Similar to starting therapy for me, too. I was terrified to talk about my problems (although I really wanted to.) I think I would have done it much much earlier, though, if I hadn't had to ask for it. It was harder to ask my parents, then it was to be in therapy. Weird but true.

I don't know that the first step is the hardest, but it's the one you have the least background to find hope from. It's the one where you have no prior information to guess how this will go. So maybe it's the most frightening.

Anyway, we talked groundwork principles. How once I started talking, I might want to say too much too quickly, but he would be there to help me pace it with what I really could handle (even after the time had come to end a session.) How I needed autonomy from my parents; I needed to know that what I said would not change his perception of me, or of my family. He said the only thing it might change was the manner in which he was able to help me, the choices he made during our time, and that made sense to me because that's how it's been. He didn't not like me when I didn't start school last January; we talked, and he realized that it would have been dangerous. Now he helps me work through school without being there. It's good.

And he said that he understood that action based on my words might be more dangerous than what the words themselves described, a sort of confused idea on which I asked him to elaborate. He told me that "historically" therapists hear something and decide really quickly to *do* one thing or another, that such snap-decisions can actually be a *new* trauma, one more dangerous than the one mentioned, the one that caused them to act. I thought of how often this has happened to me, how often people have broken my confidence or handed me over to someone just because I was honest, and even though that same idea has been really good at times, it's not an idea that can be made quickly. It's odd of me to say that because of what happened with my dad today (I really should say it all at once) and how adamant I was about "he has to do this. There's no gray. I don't even understand the confusion." But in my dad's case it was protecting his credibility, legally protecting himself, and protecting the people involved- after listening carefully to them. It wasn't, "Oh, god, my book says if you say that you're suicidal, so I'm interrupting you mid-sentence to call someone else in." I don't know that I've ever had someone say to me, "I trust you with yourself." It isn't the same as "you can take care of yourself" because I can't fully...but he told me what I truly needed to know- that my call was as important as his call. That he had the degree but it was my life and while we worked out long-term solutions, *I* had to deal with the short-term. I was the only who could know what I could and could not do moment-to-moment. He even left it up to me whether I go up on my Effexor. Because it'd be good long-term and a little scary short-term. And I need to take the latter into account. I need to not be so "well, of course; I'm trying to get better, aren't I?" that I squash down my feelings of "but I'm really scared *right now* and I don't know!"

His comment about listening and action really made me feel better, and I just swallowed hard and said, "So, like, no matter what I tell you, it'll never get back to my parents without me knowing first?"

"Never."

His never was so full, so absolutely supported by integrity, that I almost cried. It was so genuine that even when he said, more quietly- "the only exception, and I don't think this is the case- is if by leaving this office, you are in physical, [mortal] danger." It really shows me he understands. Because the way he qualified it, talking to him about any slips I have behaviorally will not get back to my parents, and that's something I really couldn't stand about Harriet. She bashed my parents and then she ran to them with "Mary's cutting herself" when half the time, they were the stress leading me to do so. I don't consider this a go-ahead to hurt myself (in any way)...I just feel a lot safer in general. I've been really afraid that he's more interested in making us a family than he is in following what feels good to *me* - which is still, at this point, to be as autonomous as possible as an immobile minor with an illness- but I don't feel that way now. I feel like, even though my memory is screaming, "he will leave, he will leave, he will leave" he's worth the risk. He even ended early because the groundwork was enough (he knew that; I didn't) and I felt fine. I didn't feel neglected; I felt safe. I was so afraid to have him "take care" of me against my will, but he did it in a way that didn't hurt. He honored what I actually needed instead of what he thought I might.

So we didn't talk about school or RED or any of those other things. But we did talk about how I'm going to feel safe discussing such things, and I think that was the most important one. The rest of it will still be there next week. This one needed to start settling. Unsaid things only become more restless, and with topics that's good- it pushes me to discuss them- but with reasons I'm struggling to talk, it makes things harder. I was glad it wouldn't go that way.

When I came home, I was thinking about why I want to be able to say "I'm sick" again, and I started saying things I had at the hospital "when I was." The right to be irrational, the right to be struggling, the right to have needs. I caught myself in between the second and third need. "Funny," I said, "sounds like I just want to be human."

So I'm going to go with that for now. I'm going to try and let myself be a human who is very much for recovery, but understands that in a way, getting better is just another step in the cycle of illness. Meaning, I didn't heal the day I started recovery, the day I left Rogers, each day I didn't relapse. I'm still not well, and I'm allowed to not seem well at times. I don't always have to be a good example. I can have my doubts.

I value integrity. I always say that, and it's *true.* So. I'm going to try really hard to be honest, even here. To say- this is what I'm feeling, and I'm not acting on it because it's not how I believe, but I'm not beyond wanting this. I'm not beyond questioning whether I want to be well or wanting to be sick. I'm not beyond needing space enough, love enough, *trust* enough, to be human.

I won't be scared to say I'm scared; that is the goal.

(or one of them)
chord

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