8:57 p.m. - 06/30/03
you are the light that is leading me ..)
I have emotional palsy. Internal tremors that would worry me if I weren't so thoroughly convinced they're signs of old heartaches, not warnings of any significant new trouble. I'm feeling scared and sad inside and very small. I'd rather not talk to anyone because I don't want to speak the same way I would if I felt my age. I don't want to sound at all strong or weathered or experienced. I feel vulnerable - hollow in the stomach, and craving at the mouth. Give me a fingernail, a piece of gum, some food. Make the longing stop somehow.
Unfortunately, none of those are particularly good options for a girl in my position (i.e. with my SCASID) - though I would probably surrender to the gum if I had any around. I'm finished with my meals today; there's no case for it as an appetite suppressent. I know what I'm craving, and it isn't food. Not even my favorite ice cream, stocked in the freezer, will oblige tonight. Food took over and became (almost) everything (there was still room for shame and pain and all the rest); tonight it's nearly meaningless. It can't compare to home...
When I went searching for designs today (and found this temporary solution), I started to think in my head about what I really wanted to find, knowing full well I wouldn't be able to create it. I thought of those signs where a road ends in a perpendicular cross road, the yellow signs with an arrow pointing both ways. I wanted a girl sitting at the base of the metal post below that sign, or maybe the scarecrow with his arms all twisted: "Of course, some do go both ways." Maybe my problem with the train design (which I already miss) was that it implied I was actually moving, instead of just wanting to be. I feel static right now. Inside, whole universes collapse and rebuild, but it's only evident in the slight twitch and fall in my expression. The world isn't much bigger than I am right now, and I am feeling small. Stomped out, easily. Wanting to go home.
Why? Why now? I spent the day doing some fun work so I can send out a couple packages, picked up some greeting cards, read a little Tolkien, watched cartoons. Why now is there that hungry bleeding in my throat, the rawness that suggests it will eat itself, if no other sustenence arrives? It's all figurative these days (thank you god) ... but nonetheless painful. I should know, having faced so much emotional/mental illness that a lack of physical pain is not the same as peace. Maybe, sometimes, I want to forget.
I want. I want, I want, I want. I am hungry for you, Rogers. RED. I want to taste you. I want you to make me full. I want your condolences, your consolations, your congratulations, your commendations, your presence. With me. I want you to listen and tell me what to talk about, and even if I'm lying down, keeping my eyes closed so as not to know it's real (oh, but I would let you be real...if only you), I will give you words until you say I'm done. I will sit silently and say nothing, if you'll have that. You rarely allowed that. I will sit so quietly and just breathe you in, and if you promise not to be bothered by me, I promise not to keep my head against your chest too long. I promise only to need holding as long as you can give it.
Or does that promise mean I need to be done one year, seven months ago? How do I answer my own questions with the mixed messages of your disappearance and your indirectly articulated love? I can't be done with you, Rogers. I can't. I don't have any other home to claim, and I'm scared; I don't want to go looking. I have a long way to walk before I'll even be ready to start being a part of a true home again, and it's now, right now, that I need one. I need you. As much as I did almost two years ago. It comes out in English now. No blurred disordered language, simply words. Tears. Genuine humanity. I know you'd love me now if you could see. All those things you thought I'd mastered when I left, I'm so much better at them. You would not believe how much I can feel, how safe I can stay, how hard I fight without any visible reason or means of doing so. I wish I could see you smile at those things. I wish I could know I still matter enough to capture your lips, to take a second of your time and present you with a smile. I want you to smile more; I'll give you anything I can think of to smile at. I want you to trust more; I'll show you how worthy I am. I want you to love me. I need you to show me. Show me what Sara says is true, what was so true two years ago, what remains impossible to break. Show me now. Give me one gentle reminder of your love, your boundless, beautiful love.
You know I never had it. You knew I was returning to a place where I wouldn't have it again, that I'd have to get through at least a year and a half before I could seek it somewhere else. You knew my parents love me, but you also knew how well. You knew about their sickness, their struggles, their incapacities. You made my story real, every source of pain confirmed, and now I'm back in that story, chewed on by that pain. You're only people after all. I can't believe that if you knew, if you understood, how consoled I'd be by the slightest recognition - not healed, I understand that; it's not good to need that from you ... but helped along, given hope, new strength, old love - you'd withhold it. But what can I tell you that I haven't already repeated twenty times?
If it were up to me, Tracy wouldn't be gone. Rae and Oshiana on their far coast would not be gone either, not even in their simple way. Sara and Abby up north...they would still be here (with you, with me, we'd be together)...Jenna and I, the central girls...Brittany...we would never leave. And you'd think that sad if I proposed it, to neveer move on, when everyone must move on...but I don't think you can understand. To survive on stale crackers for years and then feast. To survive on the wisdom of people you imagine and then be given home. To survive without safety and then know it. Be fed, come home, be safe...and then go back. Back to stale crackers. Back to yourself as sole supporter. Back to chaos, so unpinning.
If a god came into my room right now and offered me the choice, I'd rather be a doorknob in your presence than myself anywhere else. A door knob. So everyday, you'd touch me, firmly, gently, trusting. So I could have an almost invisible purpose instead of an almost invisible reason to continue. So that I could be a collection of your fingerprints. Make them my skin. None of the rest of this matters.
I'd give up everything I love to be with you. Why not? I've kept it - I've held onto it - for you as well. I've kept going. But it can't lead me away from home. I know this is healthy; I know it. It sounds horribly clingy, but I know it's not. I know this is natural. I've felt life without it, and I know why it's necessary. I know why no child can be born without a parent. Why there's supposed to be skin and safety that close. I know what I was seeking, without even knowing it, like a girl possessed, every year. I know what made me do those obsessive, embarrassing, oddball things for so many years. And I'm not doing them now. Now, I just pinpoint the source and cry the tears. I contain the wound, so as not to repeat the past.
But if I'm to have a safe haven anywhere else - present, future, ever more - you have to come be a part of it. Please. Make me an exception. Don't let this be the one thing you could not understand.
Don't leave me to be lost in all my love.
chord
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