10:33 p.m. - 12/14/03
i would be your butterfly:
I'm taking things slowly, in a day-by-day, not altogether interesting but nonetheless efficient sort of way. Working on cleaning through a first draft of a second version of the last script in our three-play extravaganza. I'm not sure where the energy is coming from, but I'm liking the feeling of productivity I can get with so little work accomplished so early in my day. I've spent the past couple mornings writing in the period between when I wake up groggy and unable to sleep and the point when I can finally fall back asleep and catch my last hour or so. This way, even if I don't get out of bed for the rest of the day, I appear productive to myself. (Low standards are good.) Throw in some crocheting, avoid illness-categorized coping mechanisms, it starts to look like an accomplishment. Maybe it is an accomplishment. Considering.
Thursday - what is that now? three days ago? - I got a letter that burned me so deeply, I still feel sick and shaky and sometimes start crying just when I think about it. I haven't read it since the first time, as it managed to have me sobbing before the end of the first paragraph. And though I do have some strange desire to torture myself, or maybe just to memorize every word so that I can counter every single word (in the response I've already written)...I've managed to avoid giving in to the impulse for now. I did write a response, and I did read another letter from the same wonderful girl, or rather the very wonderful girl whose absolutely vicious illness wrote this recent one... which made me cry as well. It was easier to read that one, though, and probably better for me. It helped remind me who she really is, that what I was reading wasn't her, and scary as it is to have the one I love so far gone...I can't take the idea that she wrote me that letter. She didn't. Her illness, her shame, her addiction, her scasid, her whatever - wrote me that letter. And someday, she'll be well, and we'll be ok, and I'll be able to go through the emotions that are linked to her even though she's not in (anything close to) complete control of her actions, feelings like anger and injury and abandonment. I did write about it in a private entry; it's something I could talk about candidly, but I can't post it for the world to see. That doesn't happen often... And I've talked to the Dr. R in my head about it. I haven't actually been able to talk to Dr. R about it considering that he's been out of commission for something like two weeks now, and will stay out of comission for - in all probability - the entirety of the next one. Can we say "oyiagh"? I'm working through all of this, keeping my relationship with my mom good in spite of the impending holiday and all the pain of the divorce that comes up in it, spending time (ok, a day) with my dad, getting letters that I'd prefer be bombs, facing migraines, anxiety, depression, and that Letter, and...well...did I mention the letter? And the fact that he's been gone? That he was actually in the hospital because he contracted that really horrible flu virus that's going around? And with my whole family so shell-shocked (especially, my mom, John, and I) we've honestly been calling his receptionist to check up on him. With the year we've had, we're terrified of what could happen. All signs point to ok; he's getting better. But when you've grown used to the ground falling out from under you, it's hard to stop holding your breath and put down your guard.
For the first time in recent memory, I'm looking forward to the new year. Normally, it seems all wrong to me: poorly timed and out of season... This year it's a hopeful thing. I already have a toast. "Soon we'll be free/ of 2003/ May life not suck more/ in 2004." Brilliant, yes? I've decided that come January 1st, bad things are going to stop happening as often as the doctor's appointments I have to discuss them. And the doctor is going to be like Tiny Tim, who did not die...
Oh, let that just be true for everyone. Give my peers and me a few more decades. Don't take anyone else, not now, not so soon, not yet. Give me time to touch them quick^ before they go.
chord
^Gina Young
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