9:31 p.m. - 05/09/03
*:| we'll see how brave you are. |:*
Step One: Hope.
Step Two: Act (in my best interest.)
Step Three: Repeat steps one and two over and over and over again until they're natural. And then some more.
So. I have to start giving myself credit for good things again. I may be going minute to minute, day to day, but I've gotten through a week that way, and- as they say- that's not exactly something to sneeze at. (I don't know. They're weird.) I'm pulling the last semester of my high school career together rather well. My 20th Century (history) teacher informed Mistrandy that she thinks I've done more work than the rest of her students combined; I'm exempt from the 80s and 90s and she's debating if I need to take the final. If so, I have a study guide that covers everything, including the last two decades. My physics teacher sent me back a test I took just *Wednesday* and I only missed one question. I just stared at it and went, "How is this possible?!" which I always do when I get back a physics test, and she said, "I know. He [my way-cool phys teacher] thinks your a phenom." I was like, I love him! And I guess it's ok to be happy about a number, when it's not really the number that matters. It's the fact that something resembling what Neverland tried to grind me into a breathless pulp over (i.e. mathematical science) has become something in which I excell, even though I'm almost entirely self-taught. Rock. What else? My (Teaching) Diversity (Through Literature) teacher says that I have an A for this year, and next year, and basically any other year I want one. I'm reading Savage Inequality for that, and since I seem to have earned my grade certainly, I feel freer about my response essay. Dela and I had a really marvelous talk when I was in New York about how instructing kids not to write "I" in a paper, simultaneously teaches them to pull out all that "I" represents - i.e. identity, self-hood, personal opinions, perceptions, et cetera. So I'm going to put my "I" back in this time. I finished Beloved for gothic, and I think I want to reread it. I have to write these stupid questions for each chapter (to spur discussions I can't have with anyone) and since I didn't receive that assignment until I had about forty pages left to read, I need to go back and do it. It's a literary masterpiece (no, I'm serious), and I think I might have more fun rereading it, gleaning all the good of a second read, then just skimming it for class. Oh. And Mistrandy entirely didn't care that I had no work for her today. I finished two history tests and took a psych test also (over- of all things- therapy. Ha.) My schoolwork over the past few days has basically been reading. So I have little to show for it, but I have been working. And all my teachers think I'm some sort of miracle. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I do want to meet them, or at least some of them...like my Div teacher, and the cool Physics dude. Maybe they'll manage to drag me into that building after all.
I'm so glad I've done the past two (one? three? one and a half?) years homebound, though. Best decision ever. Except recovery and Rogers and all that stuff that makes ordinary life-decisions obsolete. I wish it were an option open to students who weren't sick or pregnant. (Odd realization yesterday: The doctor keeps using pregnancy and labor metaphors to talk about my life right now, and oddly enough, that's basically the entire form for homebound instruction. "When's my due date?" et cetera. Maybe I'll ask him what trimester I'm in when I see him. I see him soon. Tuesday. Tuesday is not far away. I feel better now that it's Friday. I survived the week, and nothing horrible exploded to take away my weekend. I'll live and live well. One, two, three steps at a time.*)
There's an interesting cross-curricular-ish feel in my classes right now. For instance: reading Beloved- which takes place right after the Civil War, studying the Civil Rights movement, reading a book about the inequity of public education and the systemic prejudice based on race/class, et cetera. It seems like there's more, but I'm not sure how to fit longitudinal and transverse waves into the equation (though I do know quite a bit about the necessary equations to define said waves) so I'll let it be. Anyway, school is one thing I'm doing right and can feel good about. I'm going to graduate well. My teachers take pride in me. I never had to prove anything to Neverland, but when I think otherwise, I can know I did well enough to do so. Grades entirely excluded. I'm a person far beyond what they had planned for me, already. I'm a person far better than those "mentors" I had "modeling."
(When I speak of school in Neverland, I'm entirely talking about high school. Just for the record. I have very few bad words for any other grade. I mean other grades involved Mandy and Chas - before they were Mandy and Chas, to me - and people who still influence my behavior, despite the fact I haven't seen them in ten years. It's only the high school that needs to be condemned, burned to the ground, and re-built by a committee of brilliant teachers handpicked by (and working with) the traumatized students who know best what went wrong in our oh-so-prestigious high school.
There are other things I'm doing right also. I didn't let my ice cream craving earlier lead to anything other than a bit of ice cream, and I didn't let bit of ice cream be dinner. I ate late, but the important thing is I ate. I took care of myself; I feel better physically (and as I write this, emotionally). I'm not nit-picking or focusing on the bad in what I'm doing because "I have to keep constant, vigilant watch." I'm letting myself be human and still doing what I need to do, which is new but definitely good. And I will probably screw it up more than a few times, and when I do, hopefully I'll realize understanding, accepting, not beating myself up over (or entirely shrugging off) the mistakes - is the point.
Me, yesterday: "I'm just trying really hard to be good."
Dr. to me, yesterday: "What do you mean, 'be good'?"
Me: "You know, like...not restricting or purging or anything."
Him: "Oh, ok. So being good is not making any mistakes."
Me: "Right."
Hmm...might this play a part in my misery? I know I have real grief and real pain, and I'd be doing myself a disservice if I tried to play it all off as my cognitive missteps. But...I'm putting it together a little more, now. I'm going easier on myself, and it's Friday, and I feel like I'll survive the weekend. I did send the doctor an e-mail yesterday, and I tried to keep it honest without begging him to feed me a little self-esteem. If I don't hear back by Monday morning, I'll call and leave him a message that it's there- so hopefully, he'll have read it Tuesday. But I think just writing it made things better for me. I didn't need to talk to him as soon, once I realized that we could address things in the next session. I think I'm freezing up and not saying what I need to, and it's making it harder to go the time between sessions. (Plus, things are really hard.) So, maybe I'll take some anxiety meds before Tuesday's visits and continue to push myself to communicate for that hour, or hour-and-a-half or whatever the dear man makes it.
He's so great. And you know who else is great? (Well, me, but that's cheesy, and it's already obvious how hard I'm trying here, so let's just take it down a notch.) But, seriously, Tori Amos is great. Still. I've been madly in love with her for...nearly six years now. Whee. We'll see how brave you are...
You're damn right. You will.
chord *->--
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