9:26 p.m. - 08/16/03
::just because you love me the way that you do:->
I need a capsule for all my energy, a point toward which my thoughts and nervousness and whatever else can be directed. I need some way to turn my landscape into one point perspective, all of us resting in line with that nice shady tree or the stream or the lamp outside the window. I need a massage, a good cry, a better laugh, and a long nap in the world's most comfortable bed, with even better bedding. I need, in the simplest of terms, to relax. A bit. A bit much. A bit muchly.
Today is August 16th, otherwise known as the most recent if-I-haven't-called-by-that-day-I-will-on-it celebration. I really tried to get around it. I thought about how I could give myself an extension because it doesn't do me any good to be rigid about things. And then I thought about how if I call today, I won't be able to call on Thursday - because it will be too soon - and Thursday is my two-year anniversary and maybe I'll *want* to call...at which point I had to ask myself who made up the rule saying I couldn't call again that soon, and realize it was me and therefore poppycock.
Now, there's a word you don't hear everyday. For fairly good reason, honestly...
Said poppycock continued and probably would have won over if a phone call with Sara and a note from Beth Ann hadn't pounded (gently) into my head that I need to call. But I'm scared! the voice inside me whined. I'm too stressed and anxious today! And the authoritative voice responded, Well, that's why you're calling. If you wait longer, you'll only be more nervous. This is why you need to call. So, I did, a little after seven, a bit on the early side to get anyone. Oddly enough, it took two calls and about twenty rings (each) to get someone at the main switchboard...then of course, no one answered the phone. I thought very hard about saying, "Well, I tried," and shrugging it off for the night, but promised myself I'd try at a decent hour instead; so around nine, I did a quick breathing exercise (oh, the annoyance of not having air) and called again. Someone answered at the main exchange (which I think is weird; isn't it usually automated by nine?) [she asks as if any but one of you could know] and sent me over to the right extension, where, once again - no one answered. I can't pull myself together to try again tonight, so I'm going to have to outline some "in cases of no answer" clause for my stay-in-touch scheme. I want to keep trying second shift because I want to talk with Sara (staff-Sara.) So, I guess I'll call again each day until I get someone, or until the twenty-second (day after my anniversary) at which point I'll make a new plan. Aigh. Calling home should not be so complicated...
Home? I guess home. I know home. Something just came up in me as I was talking with (non-staff, sisterish) Sara today... It's the part of Rogers I try to forget, the reason I don't want to go back (even though I do), the horrible sadness of it, the sickness of it, the part that I'm so desperate to escape. I woke up this morning, realized what I'd considered last night, and honestly felt like I'd considered...eating my feet or something equally ridiculous. What was I thinking? I know I was desperate, I know I was upset, I know I was really, really hurting...but which part of that would have been made at all better by falling back into this sick, sad devil I try so hard to escape? No part. So, I'm lucky that I didn't do anything, and I'm still on track with my eating; I'm glad I made the right decision. (Anyone else feel a disclaiming conjunction coming on?) ...But...No, I'm not saying that. I'm unsaying that: But. Because I honestly am relieved that I withstood whatever went on last night and made it to this morning's return of my senses basically in tact. It's just that, being in tact, and then stumbling into the territory of someone who is not in tact (you know, as cool as it sounds to say I'm a ringleader, living up to the title does have its downsides), I realized how very much I want to be away from eating disorders. And you do understand that eating disorders are a huge part of Rogers. The place I call home, the unit where I lived (for the first time in several million years), wouldn't exist without that disease, without people needing to recover from it. And I hate having the thing I most despise (and beyond that hatred...the thing that leaves me so deeply, speechlessly sad) tied to the thing I most love. That isn't right at all. That isn't right at all. Hell and home do not go together. Who let the devil into paradise?
I don't want to be anywhere near that illness...that depressing, life-sucking, shaming, boring illness. I want nothing to do with it ever again. If I could have my way, I'd never see or hear the word "calorie" again. I'd never have learned to view celery as decidedly different from ice cream, and I sure as hell would not base my self-worth on the difference. If I could do it all over, I'd go back in time about ten years, and I'd track down every girl I later met at RED. (Including myself.) And I would listen to them, and force the people who loved them to listen, and I would make sure they never needed to develop this illness. I'd make sure they never even thought they needed it. Rogers would be some sort of camp we all went to, a place where people who hadn't been entirely broken and drained by corrupted, blind communities came and received love for no better reason than because they deserved it, then went off again, with no memories of weigh-ins, blood tests, or meal compliancy. If I could go back and be in charge, Rogers would still be home. I wouldn't change that. I wouldn't want to do anything that would keep me from meeting those people that I love so dearly - even the ones I'll never hear another word from - but I'd make it a real home. A right home. A home without a hospital, where you don't need switchboard operators and extension numbers to call. Where they keep scrapbooks and photo albums instead of charts. If I could I'd make it natural. I'd have them insisting I love them the way my mom insists on it; they'd be saying, "Don't you even want to live with us a little?" and I'd be saying yes. Even though I wouldn't be...I'd be off at college or something, but I would call, and it would be right. Home without a hospital, imagine. Home wherever the fuck it's supposed to be. Not in the upstairs hallway of a dark school when the classrooms are abandoned for lunch. Not in the seething heat of an old gymnasium where people rush around you, made-up and costumed. Not in a hospital you nearly begged yourself from experiencing and nearly begged yourself from having to leave.
You know, when Dave heard my relapse nightmare, he said it almost made him want to let me stay. I knew then that he understood the best he ever could. I knew I'd given that assignment everything I had. It had been, in some form (though I continued to plead afterward) my final appeal. And he heard it, and he did what he had to do, what he had to do so that I wouldn't rot in all that sickness: he signed the forms and sent me away. I know what Steph meant when she said I didn't want to be there. I don't want to be there. It wears on you. It breaks your heart everyday, until you sigh to punctuate your sentences. It injures your ability to hope. This illness takes all life it can find; it may live in one victim but it will happily take down everyone who loves her/ him as well. So we have to walk away. We have to pack our bags and have our "appreciation group" and leave. We have to not e-mail pleas to every pro-ana victim on the web - or even one of them...We...I...just have to keep on walking away. And it is away, even though it seems to be in circles. It is away, even though it's also through. We have to concede that we're never going back. And I may be terrified that there's nothing so good as that home in my future, but I still won't turn around and go back to it. Think about that statement for a moment. How many times did I get scared and run back to my illness? And this place, this experience, these people were so great, that nearly two years later, the strength they helped me find and build can still sustain me. They made me strong enough to live away from them. And it's true, I don't always want to be. I don't know that I ever want to be that strong. But it isn't a fluke that's kept me in recovery despite "the thing I want most" being to go back. It's solid fact. The thing I want most is to love them, which I do, and to live the way they taught me, which I can't if I'm sick. Oh, it's a horrible love that gives you the strength to leave.
I'm watching people run. Leave. That's always been the most horrible idea to me, and that's a large part of what I indict my parents for doing. I'm watching them leave their relationship. And maybe there is justification, maybe if I knew the details and wasn't their daughter, so terribly wronged by this, I would understand. But from my perspective, what they're doing is a very different sort of leaving then what I promised to do. They promised to stay together and are breaking apart. I promised to keep going. In essence, I promised to leave.
That Greek myth about the lovers comes to me now. The man must walk from inside hell to the outskirts without ever looking back; if he does his love will follow him, and he'll be reunited with her when they make it out of hell. But if he looks back once, he'll lose her forever. And he looks back, and he loses her. I haven't looked back. I obsess and I write and I call, but I don't retrace the steps of sickness. I don't go back. I hold them in me, and I pray that they're behind me, and who knows, maybe I'll get to the edge of hell and be with them again. More and more of the people who made my Rogers worth loving have moved away from the illness as well. It seems more possible to build a world like that outside, knowing that some of the others are entering it. We have some of our best people this side of hell, this side of illness, out of Rogers and into our world. So maybe the price of making it won't be losing the only home I ever had.
We'll escape and they'll "think highly of me" and they'll tell me I did it just the way I was supposed to do. I'll walk all the way through hell and never look back, and then, in a rush of affection, I feel them surround me again, and they'll say, "You did it. You did it. Now we're together forever. Mary, now we're home."
I have a pathetically weak threshold for happy endings.
chord
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