9:47 p.m. - 12/03/03
and I'm brave...I'm brave.
Really bizarre day. Actually, if I'm going to be technical, I suppose it's not at all bizarre. I stayed here, I worried about friends, I was actually productive (ok that's odd) but only in the sense I can be when I'm not interacting with the world at all, when I'm still learning how to say (type) the word a.gor.a.phob.i.a., not yet near the place where I can somehow quit having it. A poster Sara made me fell down today for the second time, and because I have not yet managed to stop myself from going, "It's a sign! It's a sign!" every time a breeze blows, because it fell rather violently, because I haven't talked to her in several weeks, and because I was getting downright paranoid, I called her cell. I left a message, and I don't know what I was expecting back. A call a few hours later, hearing that she's in another hospital, in serious physical risk, intent on how much she wants to live life, aware of the reality of things, wasn't surprising, really. I suppose it's something I could have expected. I also expected to hear from a family member, letting me know the worst news I can imagine receiving. I expected all sorts of things, and that first one happened. I did something new and actually told her how scared I am about losing her. She told me she really doesn't think I'll have to. She said she hopes so. I cried, and when I hung up, I wondered if Jenna's way wasn't better after all, if it wouldn't make more sense to just move on, distance myself, not be caught up in this. Then I remembered how Jenna is doing and how impossible it's been for me to just "quit caring." I remembered that my attachments aren't the sticky-tak or velcro variety; they tend to fight for permanence. I could see in my head another life I was supposed to be living, maybe one I had lived a little over the past week, where this wasn't something that came up, where I didn't know these people - do you know, if I hadn't gone to Rogers those three months, I wouldn't have a single relationship where this was an issue? - and then I started crying because ... I don't want to give up that section of my life, or any part of my life now that was built from it. I don't want to consider that. I don't want to not know my friends or no longer love them. But I guess I need them to understand how painful it is, just as I'm trying to understand how painful it is from the inside. (I can imagine her fear; I remember how scared I was when that sort of physical disintegration was only theoretical...) I told her today about the pain of it and how I wished I could come with a magic wand and heal everything, and she said, "I forgot I'm speaking to a codependent" - which didn't make me laugh. I stood up for my feelings, actually; I said, "I'm not being codependent" even though I suddenly doubted it...but I know it's true. I wasn't trying to help her so that I could feel like a worthwhile person. I was wishing I could help her because I feel like my heart's being ripped apart - because I love her and it's so awful to watch this happening.
I've been thinking about "God" today. The guy-in-the-sky god that I don't actually believe in, the one who predetermines lives. I've been thinking about how I was raised to have the biggest dreams and to take on the biggest problems. I'm thinking how God could have come to me and said, "Mary, I need you to go on a dangerous wild safari" or "track down a cure for cancer" or "be a Broadway star" or "write successful, brilliant novels" or "become an ambassador" or "president" or anything. There are so many things this god I don't believe in could have set me out to do, so many paths I would have run down obediently, and I keep asking what I'm supposed to do, what life I'm supposed to live, and the answer I get is: This one. What do you want me to do? (I ask the one I do believe in.) Live, is the response. What life do you want me to live? I ask. This very one you're in.
I would have wrestled tigers and climbed Mount Everest and created vaccines and cured the ills of the Middle East; I would have understood how to believe in myself through all of that. I would have understood how to set myself on a path toward achieving that. But to live this life? Where the battle on a given day is mainly to not do one thing for so long that depression sets in? Where the phone rings and my friends are dying or doesn't ring and I imagine they're dead? Where I spend a week with siblings, with friends, writing again, decorating my room...and finding out that I can't stop anything, can't save anyone, can't do anything but live my own life and mourn the people who won't do so in their own? To live this life... I'm clueless. It's like I've been prepared my whole life to lead a radical feminist revolution and now I'm being asked to sit down, put on a dress and apron, and settle into life as a fifties housewife. That's just the way things turned out. Ironic, huh? Oh, well. And I don't know anything. What if this isn't the life I'm supposed to be living? What if I screwed it up a few years back, and now it's just permanently marred? I don't even believe in predestination but I'd rather ask these bullshitting philosophical questions than face anything. I'M EIGHTEEN AND MY BEST FRIEND IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DYING. We're kids and this could have been prevented.
This could have been prevented! Someone could have stepped in earlier and not given up. Not looked away. I have a painful urge to strike out at the proctor of my writing workshops from summers past. I want to detail for her my life now, and I want to ask if she's still so relieved that I "only" have an eating disorder, "not something serious" like cancer or AIDS. Are you still relieved? Highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. Feel like I'm living in a war zone. Doubt my right to live a marginally decent life because I have friends who haven't gotten that far. I want to say to her, my Rogers therapist says, "They're going to get better. We just have to hope they get better before they die." I want to see her stay straight-faced through that. Rather, I want to see her face contort. I want her to cry. I want her to tell me how sorry she is. I want her to understand and feel the pain and share it with me. I don't want to shoulder her ignorance along with the rest of this.
It's not really that I want to hurt her so much as I need her to not be able to look at what I'm looking at and be ok. I need people to look at my life and feel weak, ill; I need tears. Just the understanding that this isn't right. Just a few minutes where no one's trying to justify it, blame those who are struggling, or "religion it away." Just a few minutes where you'll look at it without any defenses up and see where I stand. I've decided, this is a third world country in the Round World. I've decided there's a better life than this. But some of the people living the better life, they'd rather turn their heads, throw pennies my way, watch documentaries and never meet a real person.
I had other things to say. I worked on my walls today, put up things other than Rogers; now I need to move them over because Rogers feels overgrown - it doesn't stand out, separate, as it must. (For now.) I had friends over. I had siblings over. I lived this normal life, and I've been doing well these days that I haven't been journalling so much... except. I come back to this. I come back to this, still present in my life. And I don't want to take it out because it's connected to people I won't take out, people who - at the mere thought of losing them - have me in tears. I had other things to say, but they stop mattering. They matter, but they get postponed. This is the breaking news, the heartbreaking news, the story that throws everything else to a back burner. This is the story of the life I wasn't ready for.
chord
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