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8:00 p.m. - 09/25/03
for as long as you will have us, we are yours. and this is your home. and this, my lovely child, is your garden.
HELP ME.

It's not as bad as you think.

It is. I can't cry, and I need to cry, and until I cry I'm not going to feel better. Or at least, I'm going to feel like I need to cry. And I don't only want to be able to cry at the doctor's office. That's ridiculous. I want to be able to cry here, too. I'm tired of songs that aren't even good making me ache inside, and I just want to let some of it out. In a healthy way. I just want to let some of it out.

What's it have to do with, do you know?

It has to do with loving Rogers and missing Rogers and remembering it as a very ...

[and this is when I realized that it had to do with remembering Rogers before it was big and powerful, when it was just the tiny, foreign details; the part of it that's only plaster, floorboards, doors]

that was before I had colored it all in so vibrantly with miracle. that was before when I didn't know how to get through the hallways alone, when it seemed like a winding, impossible maze. I didn't call it home then. I didn't color it fully in, embellish it, point out every feature, saying look look look look look. do you see the way the light slants just that way, and the angle of it bounces off the wall so that the couch here glows? do you see the difference between daylight and lamplight and how both are beautiful. it makes better sense to crochet by lamplight in this room with its (electric) fireplace, but we do it all day just the same. the fireplace cannot be turned on until a certain month. October, maybe...September? the fireplace cannot be on, but when it is the heat fills the room, and people complain, but we like the glow of artificial flames. we stomp around doing nothing and people downstairs complain about that, but how are we supposed to stay still all the time? we play music, and it's the kind of music I thought I hated, but I listen to it here, and only roll my eyes when Dave is watching. one night, Rae plays "Follow Me" and "Drops of Jupiter" both of which I think I hate, but the apology and the look on her face when I mention that make me wish I didn't. I listen to Drops of Jupiter until I can tell myself I like it because I like Rae. I want to be more connected to her; I want her to like me. it's hard not to be needed; she's been here long enough to have good friends without me. everyone's accepting, but I still miss being magnetically attached to someone. this is the Rogers before it's abbreviated. this is Rogers Memorial Hospital, where I will be going, and oh God, isn't that too formal. far too formal. I'm here. at this place. there's a pay phone at the end of the hallway; there's a glass window into the office, but during admissions they close the blinds. we like to peek, and they know that. there's a board opposite the window where we mark our location - unit, day room, walk, and so forth. for awhile we can draw our own symbols, and Rosie draws that she's in Hawaii which everyone loves, but then they give us little colored dots and we lose our outlet, just a little. we still write on the needs board, which is a blue dry erase board on the wall opposite the "kitchen" cabinets. mostly it stays blank, but every now and then it fills up with the crises of several girls. everyone wants to talk to Dave, needs to talk to him, sooner than their session, again afterward, and so forth. in the beginning, I joke about writing that I need to stay away from him. then one day, I write that I need to show him something; it's the paper I put on my walls so I could write whatever the hell I wanted on them...and there are my emotions inked like posters, which he reads. I don't think he quite understands the sentiment of one of them, which is angry at a staff member - not my illness, but it's still a good step for us. I need to learn to trust him and I will. I don't hate him entirely, the way some people think I do, the way I sometimes think I do. the day that I'm admitted, the first day, he comes to my room and talks with my parents and with me, introduces himself. after awhile, I walk away and continue unpacking. he says, "has she had enough of me?" or something like that...and I turn around, stunned, wanting to say, "no, no, no, no, no. I'm just invisible. I just assumed you weren't talking to me."

that's where the raw place was - that the first day, the day I was admitted, Dave came to my doorway. that's it. well, I'm not going to be admitted ever again because I'm never going to need the breath of life again. I have the gift tucked deep inside, and I won't give it up to anyone or any problem or any pain. it's mine for life, and that life is my gift to them. my reciprocity. you saved my life; I will live it. you gave me a way to live; I will not forget. I will not go back to my eating disorder, and therefore, I will not go back to you. it isn't the same to think of a rap speak; I worry about what Silje said - that no one seemed to take in what she said, that they all seemed too sick...I don't want it to be that way. but mostly, I worry about being there healthy. you know I'll cry, but it's more than that. can I really do it? could I ever really do it? walk through the door, up the stairs, knock on the unit wall, have you come into the hall to greet me? could I ever be in that space and not fall to my knees. you will undo me. my love will undo me. my love is balanced by my loss; they're equally intense, and dear dear dear, if I were there - for just a day, an hour, ten minutes - if I were in those halls the way I used to dream I was...I'd be a puddle on the floor. I'd be clinging to the ankles of whomever was closest; I'd be pleading. ok. ok. ok! don't you see you win? don't you see I'll do whatever you say, forever and for always? don't you see I'll put the pain of it aside and keep going until three years, four years, five - it doesn't even faze me...I'll do it everyday for a hundred years, if that's what you want. I will. I will. I swear I'll do it. but I would be on my knees or my side, the fetal position; I would be pleading. I have the ability to promise this because I am your daughter or your sister - someone; I am yours. and please, won't you take me back in? not here; I hate it here, the fumes of sickness contaminate the air and make it hard to breathe. the girls who are dying terrify me and make me remember pain I'd rather not remember. the girls who are getting better make me remember love like...nothing I can believe. but I do believe it. that's what you did; that's the key - the one amazing thing. I DO BELIEVE IT. I put all my faith in it, in love - love as a spiritual reality, and love as you gave me. Love as a means of healing. Love so deep it makes me want to rip all the greeting cards to shreds; they've misrepresented it. They've warped it's meeting. I do believe. in you, in myself, in the love, in the connection, none of it is going away, and I know that! I even know that six years from now, if I still want to be calling you, I still can be calling you. after EIGHT YEARS, if it's what I want, you will still answer. I know that, and I know I can't come back. ever. can't ever live in it again. but maybe that's ok. maybe it's enough to build it with you outside. my siblings and I will never again live all together with my parents, but I can see Sarah in New York, and Dale in Kansas City, and Joe in Nashville, and John here. so our family is forever in tact. and so, too, will my Family survive. I will see Laura in Minnesota, I will see Chas even after she's married, I will see Shan in Boston, and Julian and Cameron and Dela and Lindsey and Beth and Britt and everyone else wherever they end up. I will hold onto Mandy and Brea and Sara and Sara and Stacy and anyone else that I can, and we will build these little touch-base homes. twenty cottages replace the castle. whatever it takes. and I might still crumple when I get to your doorway, and I know I'll break down (or through or something) if I ever set foot in my own, but I won't be without a home. never, ever, ever again. growing up was horrible in that regard, and exile in D!@#$%^ was cruel; it was spirit-breaking. (or it tried to be.) but look at me. at my computer crying, in my room in the city, between two arts districts, having just called Rogers, meaning to call Sara, a letter from Dixie waiting for my response. look at me being everything I have a right to be. trying, damnit. trying. and succeeding. and I love you, and it's not because you don't love me that I can never come back. I know that. it's not because she doesn't love me that Chas and I can't live together until the end of time, can't be enough for each other, maybe wouldn't want to be, though there was a time I wanted that. I am loved, and I have a home in that love. My Family gave me faith and my recovery is like religion; it's the set of practices through which I maintain and access all that I believe. I love my home. I love it. I love it I love it I love it I love it. and it's never going away, and it's never mutating into something bad, and I will never be alone the way I was. ever. my home isn't those three units in the woods in the middle of nowhere. it's less tangible than that (but more real); it's in the air and the people and the space between us. it's in the distance we reach through and the touch we keep, holding on. the walls and a roof, rooms and a door, I have here are better than what I had in D!@#$%^, but it's still simply the sum of walls and roof and rooms and doors. my home is here, in me, in all the energy surrounding me, the memories, the thoughts, the love that rises unseen out of envelopes, all that touches me, the fumbling decision to lean on my mom and let myself love her. let myself need her. this place is a place, no less than that, no more. and Rogers is a place, too, the site of magic, but you'd never recognize if you didn't know.

I was born a foundling. a stray cat. infant abandoned, in need of fostering. I was born craving and never full enough, into a family of people who love me gigantically...and with them and my other Family, the gift I so badly needed and never could track down when I tried, I'm not a stray, abandoned/ foundling anymore. all these tears I have are tears of joy. some fall because I didn't have what I have now for so long, and there's pain in remembering that...but for all of that grief, there's the knowledge that I have it now. and you're not taking it away. you don't even want to. no one does, or if they do, they can't. I even tried to squelch it and (praise love) I never could.

I never will. I'll keep being and living and loving and knowing I'm loved. I'll do what you taught me, with a devotion you may not understand. I'll be ok with that. let me hold you, even if it doesn't make sense. talk to me, even if it seems quirky that I call. say out loud those things that make my week: that you are proud of me, that you speak of me, that you believe in me, that I am doing this. I spent my childhood dying, you know, and I'm getting my life back now. and to be able to hear you, on the field with me, saying, "We're so proud of you, Mary" ... it's like a second chance. you can't change what I didn't have; I'll have to grieve it. but you changed what happened to me. I was already in the city limits of disaster heading for downtown. I live in love now. my love, your love, love I can't define.

I live because of you. and I live for myself. and I'm not invisible, and I'm not shy, and I'm not going to forget anything. minutiae that only I need know because it comforts me. and the huge themes of who you are, who I am, what we're doing and have done.

I can see the wings of this miracle. I touch the fabric of the dress she wears.

chord
[Mary Brave]

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